Brain drain also affecting villages

Brain drain also affecting villages

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Brain drain has hit rural areas as their best and brightest stream to urban centers to try their luck, noted sociologist Loekman Soetrisno told a seminar on rural sustainable development.

The lecturer at the Gadjah Mada University said here on Tuesday that urbanization has been robbing villages of their best human resource. "And nobody has the right to prevent villagers from leaving to seek better lives," he said.

"In China, urbanization is prevented, but its government supports the villagers' effort to develop. The government... establishes adequate infrastructure so that entrepreneurship and other rural economic units can develop well," Loekman said.

In Indonesia, on the other hand, rural entrepreneurship lags, he said.

The seminar was organized by Sanata Dharma University, Atma Jaya University and Indonesia Islamic University. It also featured sociologist Edward Shinn from Colorado University in the United States and Soehardi from Diponegoro University in Semarang.

Loekman stressed the need to bridge the development gap between urban and rural areas by, among other things, reviving rural industries. "This would call for a change in the development approach," he said.

Shinn gave a similar view to that of Loekman's, saying that rural women and youngsters are at a disadvantage because of the limited employment opportunities available in the villages.

"The real problem that villagers face is limited access to social, economic, political and business fields," he said. "The government needs to provide better infrastructure and more access to business and trade."

Loekman listed a number of flaws in the current development model, the first of which is that it is undemocratic. "The people are not confident enough (to participate). Public participation (in development) is nonexistent," he said. "The concept of sustainable development was introduced quite a while ago but it's just not working."

Loekman pointed out another flaw, namely the lack of technology transferal in some processes of development. "Even the chili market is dominated by Taiwanese chili traders... (Indonesia) has to buy the expensive seeds from Taiwan."

"We are developing our aircraft industry but we don't pay enough attention to our farming community," he said. (har/31)