Indonesian is a large country, geographically (all those widespread islands) and the fourth most populous country in the world. No less importantly, Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, at 87.2% in 2010. For many, the allure of Indonesia is the magical Bali. But there is more to the country, post Suharto, as a piece from The London Review of Books details.
"A decade and a half later, Indonesia has burnished its international image. There is talk once more of a ‘rising’ Asian economy (the Boston Consulting Group predicts that more than half the country’s 242 million people will qualify as middle class by 2020), though recent economic setbacks suggest, as with similar predictions about India, that this may prove to be fantasy. Wealth has brought disconcerting changes: large parts of Sumatra, ravaged by slash-and-burn investors, resemble a lunar landscape, and smoke from land-clearing fires started by palm-oil prospectors extends as far as the cities of Malaysia and Thailand, where doctors warn people with respiratory diseases to wear masks. The city of Bandung, once famous for hosting the Afro-Asian solidarity conference of 1955, is now known for another sort of interconnectedness: low-cost Air Asia flights from Singapore and Malaysia that bring in hordes of shoppers heading for designer fashion outlets.
While outsiders focus on the new plenty, well-established business groups, many still family-owned, have used their proximity to politicians to acquire an even more disproportionate share of national resources and income. Nearly half the country’s population, employed, if at all, in the informal sector, continue to live on less than $2 a day. In a recent survey, a majority of interviewees said they preferred life under Suharto, who had at least provided affordable basic goods, security and a measure of public health provision.
Under Suharto, Indonesia’s economy grew on average 6.5 per cent per annum for thirty years before contracting by 13.6 per cent in 1998. A culture of bribes and extortion flourished, but it wasn’t incompatible with high growth. Development subsidies from the West and Japan ensured a rise in living standards even before Indonesia turned into an export-oriented country. An oil boom starting in the 1970s helped; rural incomes were boosted by the introduction of high-yield rice varieties; literacy rates, which had been abysmal, rose. Monopolies in cement, oil, timber, telecommunications, media and food were enjoyed by an indigenous business class that included Chinese-Indonesians as well as members of Suharto’s family (he didn’t trust other Indonesian business families). Local companies were allowed to make deals with multinationals; ExxonMobil moved into Aceh to operate its gas fields; Freeport and Rio Tinto acquired mining rights in Papua. Military rule opened the floodgates for the corporate class, and small windows to the middle class. Many salary-earners and members of the urban petite bourgeoisie supported Suharto (they’re the ones mourning the demise of his ‘stable’ regime), whose Golkar party ensured that some of the loot trickled down to low-level officials. Even conservative Islam was eventually brought into his patronage networks."
"A decade and a half later, Indonesia has burnished its international image. There is talk once more of a ‘rising’ Asian economy (the Boston Consulting Group predicts that more than half the country’s 242 million people will qualify as middle class by 2020), though recent economic setbacks suggest, as with similar predictions about India, that this may prove to be fantasy. Wealth has brought disconcerting changes: large parts of Sumatra, ravaged by slash-and-burn investors, resemble a lunar landscape, and smoke from land-clearing fires started by palm-oil prospectors extends as far as the cities of Malaysia and Thailand, where doctors warn people with respiratory diseases to wear masks. The city of Bandung, once famous for hosting the Afro-Asian solidarity conference of 1955, is now known for another sort of interconnectedness: low-cost Air Asia flights from Singapore and Malaysia that bring in hordes of shoppers heading for designer fashion outlets.
While outsiders focus on the new plenty, well-established business groups, many still family-owned, have used their proximity to politicians to acquire an even more disproportionate share of national resources and income. Nearly half the country’s population, employed, if at all, in the informal sector, continue to live on less than $2 a day. In a recent survey, a majority of interviewees said they preferred life under Suharto, who had at least provided affordable basic goods, security and a measure of public health provision.
Under Suharto, Indonesia’s economy grew on average 6.5 per cent per annum for thirty years before contracting by 13.6 per cent in 1998. A culture of bribes and extortion flourished, but it wasn’t incompatible with high growth. Development subsidies from the West and Japan ensured a rise in living standards even before Indonesia turned into an export-oriented country. An oil boom starting in the 1970s helped; rural incomes were boosted by the introduction of high-yield rice varieties; literacy rates, which had been abysmal, rose. Monopolies in cement, oil, timber, telecommunications, media and food were enjoyed by an indigenous business class that included Chinese-Indonesians as well as members of Suharto’s family (he didn’t trust other Indonesian business families). Local companies were allowed to make deals with multinationals; ExxonMobil moved into Aceh to operate its gas fields; Freeport and Rio Tinto acquired mining rights in Papua. Military rule opened the floodgates for the corporate class, and small windows to the middle class. Many salary-earners and members of the urban petite bourgeoisie supported Suharto (they’re the ones mourning the demise of his ‘stable’ regime), whose Golkar party ensured that some of the loot trickled down to low-level officials. Even conservative Islam was eventually brought into his patronage networks."
Comments