Decentralization a must for RI

By Iwan Mucipto

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta Post of Feb. 26 suggested that the troubled triple-tier transit system project was in danger of becoming the "triple blunder" project. It has in fact already earned that title and the first blunder was to have initiated the project in the first place.

That Jakarta needs an urgent solution to its traffic problem is beyond doubt, but it is questionable whether more of the same is the solution, or part of the problem.

City planners are well aware that building more roads attracts more cars and more people. This process continues -- development leads to more development until, like the emergence of a malignant growth, overdevelopment and maldevelopment result.

What Jakarta and the country needs is not more toll roads, although there are some parties who benefit from tollways, but policies to decentralize the country.

Jakarta is the product of extreme centralization characteristic of an "integralistic" state. It is the metropolitan heart of a classic center-periphery structure, where the center claims profits made in the periphery and reinvests those profits in the center alone.

Jakarta is the administrative, commercial and industrial center of the country. Almost 80 percent of money in circulation throughout Indonesia is in Jakarta, from where it largely flows out of the country in the direction of the industrialized North, the global metropole.

Money and investment in the heartland attract a steady stream of migrant job seekers from the hinterland. This drains peripheral areas of prime human resources and clogs Jakarta's streets.

The financial might of Jakarta reinforces the process, leading eventually to a top heavy, oppressive and exploitative center, which acts as a bottle-neck to development. In the end the center will self-destruct amid decay, glaring inequalities and social unrest.

By initiating projects, development and investments all concentrated in the same area, the country is not coming up with a solution, but staving off disaster. Partial solutions only attract yet more problems which need solutions, perpetuating the viscous circle.

Regarding transport in the city, draconian measures to curb car use coupled with the provision of alternative means of transport are required. Strictly enforced car-free zones with an adequate bus service to compensate is an example of one way to proceed.

Unfortunately Indonesia has the bad luck to have a very strong executive branch and a soft state. Democracy is thwarted and popular feedback and "reverse transmission" which normally enables the government to adjust to changing circumstances is stifled. At the same time, the country's elite is above the law and this results in confusion. No rule ever can be enforced, particularly when applied to the Jakarta-based elite.

An alternative solution to the transport crisis is comprehensive urban and regional planning. But again, a lack of vision and political will, vested interests, institutional rivalry, poor coordination, corruption and the unruly leaders of the ruling elite destroy every good plan.

They build factories in greenbelt areas and villas in water catchment zones. They even cut down hundreds of trees just to hold a single ceremony. In doing so they did not hesitate to go over the head of the governor of Indonesia's capital city. This latter misdemeanor only came to light when the governor unexpectedly voiced his displeasure.

A third alternative would be to separate the functions of the city. Jakarta, centered around West Java's main port, could be the commercial center of the country. Light industry could remain in the area, but the capital functions and heavy industry would be relocated to other areas of Indonesia.

Java has become overdeveloped. Property developers are cramming industrial parks, satellite cities, tollways and golf courses onto the most densely populated island in the world. It has even been proposed to add nuclear reactors to the list of developments already placed on this volcanic island.

Java, by virtue of its fertile soils, happens to be the rice basket of the nation. Claiming land for industrial projects has caused agricultural production to fall at the cost of losing self sufficiency in rice production.

Meanwhile the government is spending trillions of rupiah on attempts to develop a complicated farming system on Kalimantan's acid wetlands. Localized successes are grasped at to justify the massive investments and high risks of failure, of which recent history has many examples. That is not to mention the problems of pollution, soil degradation and consequent cycle of droughts and floods which will follow.

Attempts have been made to relocate people on the outer islands of Indonesia, but at the same time Java has been developed into a magnet for reverse transmigration.

To solve this problem, more of the same is not required. Only by reversing the process through decentralization will a solution be found. The process should be initiated by removing the capital to Kalimantan and relocating heavy industry to sites closer to the Pacific Rim, closer to raw materials (iron ore, coal) and farther away from population and agricultural centers.

Java should remain as the nation's rice basket, and the burden of centralization and overdevelopment should be lifted from her shoulders.

Transmigration policies should be altered. No longer should farmers conditioned on Java's fertile soils be encouraged to work the sandy and acid soils of the outer islands, where they cut down forests, clash with indigenous people, and remain poor. Instead ecologically sound agriculture and agribusiness should be encouraged in Java and white and blue-collar workers should be transferred to the periphery. This would break up the center and reverse the brain drain from the hinterland.

This article does not claim to offer a solution, but sets out to illustrate that overdevelopment cannot be cured by further development. I hope it will also remind people of an idea, first touted during Sukarno's reign, to relocate the capital as the first step toward a real decentralization process that goes well beyond MPR decrees which grant limited autonomy to the outlying provinces without letting up on efforts to sink Java like the Titanic. I happen to be a below deck passenger.

The triple-tier project may be grand but my salary has just been cut, so I have a problem appreciating this grandeur. I'd rather suffer for something real, such as political reform including decentralization, since then I could become an entrepreneur in Lombok, instead of having to work in an office in Jakarta and add to the problem of transportation.