Fitting the village into development

Fitting the village into development

Gerakan Kembali ke Desa (Back to Village Movement)
and Antum A'lamu Bi Umuuri Dunyaakum -- Engkau Lebih Tahu
Tentang Duniamu (You Know Better About Your World)
both by H. Moch. Basofi Soedirman
Lembaga Kajian Masyarakat Pedesaan, Surabaya, 1997
232 pages and 302 pages

JAKARTA (JP): It is unusual to find serving government
officials writing books or articles in the mass media. Most
usually write after they retire from public office, when their
opinions no longer matter. Their main contribution is in giving
insight into the bureaucracy and its way of thinking.

This makes Basofi Soedirman, the current governor of East
Java, rare among his peers. He has been writing for newspaper and
magazine columns since he was deputy governor of Jakarta.

Some of his views gathered from press articles have now been
compiled into two volumes.

Gerakan Kembali ke Desa (Back to the Village Movement)
and Antum A'lamu Bi Umuuri Dunyaakum -- Engkau Lebih Tahu Tentang
Duniamu (You Know Better About Your World) are not his first
forays into publishing. Three books -- also collected thoughts
from articles -- were published previously, and he also wrote
Agama dan Eksistensi Manusia (Religion and Human Existence).

Unlike most other officials, Basofi knows full well the power
of ink in influencing public opinion. On his motivation to write,
the governor once said that he wanted the public to know his
policies. By reading his articles, the public would also have a
greater sense of control over the bureaucracy, so he believed.

In Gerakan, Basofi discusses the need to move people back to
the villages.

His is not proposing a communist type of twisting back time.
He argues that there should be some development in rural areas to
slow down the process of urbanization.

He backs his proposal with various concepts.

One of them is strengthening village markets to boost the
local economy. Markets should be clean and comfortable. A
comfortable and functional market place contains cash economies
from moving out.

Another concept he has in mind is what he calls "technology to
the villages".

He argues that regional universities or research centers
should help develop rural areas. Particularly important is the
application of appropriate technology.

He also believes that to boost village economies, there is no
way other than to inject more capital. This he terms "capital to
the villages".

Along with this, he coins the phrase "entrepreneurs to the
villages". Both terms refer to a concept of small-scale
capitalism.

Basofi however is not proposing a full-blown capitalist
system. His next concept of "one village, one product" resembles
more a socialist type of concept for rural development.

To maximize their true economic potential, he suggests that
each village produce a single product. This, he says, would lead
to competition between villages, but not within villages.
Concentrating on a single product also means consolidating the
territorial divisions of labor, he says.

Basofi's ideas are not new by any means. But they are forceful
because they come from a person with authority and in a position
to translate them into policies.

Nganjuk, a regency in East Java, has applied some of his
concepts. A number of villages, with the encouragement of the
regency administration, have been planting shallots and are
already reaping the benefits for both farmers and traders.

Basofi's other book, Antum A'lamu Bi Umuuri Dunyaakum,
attempts to create a national model of development.

Written in a populist manner, he likens his model with a
racing car.

A new car, he argues, would not necessarily be ready for
competition in a circuit. There are a lot of other requirements
for a car to compete in, let alone win, a race.

These requirements must be fulfilled by society, he argues.
The government, he adds, can only do so much.

Both works are clearly not intended to be scholarly. Yet,
their contents and references are serious enough to merit
attention.

But their strongest selling point remains the author and the
insight they give to the governor, who will likely remain in
senior government positions for some years to come.

-- Hermawan Sulistyo

The writer is a researcher with the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences. He received his PhD. degree from the Scholarly
Publishing Program, Arizona State University, United States.