Pre-"British" Colonial Singapore and the Indian contribution

Apparently before Singapore became a British crown colony in April 1867, it was managed as part of the Straits Settlement along with Penang and Malacca as a subdivision under the presidency of Bengal (British India) in 1826! A lot of public works projects which allowed Singaporean infrastructure to develop such as swamp draining, forest clearing and road making were done with labor provided by Indian convicts undergoing rehabilitation in the 1830s due to them being transferred here in 1825. Singapore's penal system of rehabilitating rather than merely punishing convicts via training them to become useful members of society was considered so enlightened that Dutch, Siamese, and Japanese prison administrators came to observe it.

It is probably this period that caused a rather big swing in the racial ratios in early Singapore- before 1960 Malays were the second most numerous community in Singapore but they fell to third place after 1960 as many indigenous Malays in the region had the option to (and did) move back to Malaysia to join other groups of Malays whereas it was not so simple for the Indian diaspora to return back to India.

Sources:
http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_890_2004-12-24.html
http://countrystudies.us/singapore/5.htm

Curiously enough, I actually thought a lot of our legal/penal codes were inherited from India. If you go on Singapore Statutes Online and trace the origins of the laws, you'll see citations pointing back to the law in India (during the period of British colonization, no doubt).

Plus the British has a knack of using convicts to do hard labour at foreign colonies. Australia, for example.