Good is not good enough

Indonesia has been making some progress in the human development front, according to the new Human Development Report 2003. Admittedly, it is not a lot of progress, but it would be wrong to completely dismiss its significance, especially given the economic predicaments that we have been in these last five years.

The report by the UN Development Program says that Indonesia's Human Development Index, based on 2001 figures, was 0.682 (1.0 being a perfect score and zero the worst). This compares favorably with Indonesia's score of 0.659 in 1995, and 0.619 in 1990.

Needless to say, the index is an aggregation of many facets of human development. In poverty eradication and children's health, Indonesia saw significant progress. In school enrollment and environmental protection, we saw a reversal of fortune. In maternal fatality and promoting gender equality, we seem to have neither progressed nor regressed, according to the report.

The report puts Indonesia 112th of the 175 countries listed, below all the other Southeast Asian countries except Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. Even Vietnam has a higher ranking. Compared with other large Asian countries, China ranks higher, but India is below Indonesia. Indonesia's position dropped from 110th in last year's ranking because of the entry of Bosnia Herzegovina and Palestine, two countries still mired in violent conflicts.

The report also measures countries in terms of their performance in fulfilling what the UN calls Millennium Development Goals. These are lofty and ambitious (but not unattainable) goals for improving the lot of the people in areas of poverty, hunger, education, health and the environment, through concerted global efforts that require the assistance and benevolence of the wealthier countries. They are measurable goals with clear schedules, like halving poverty and eliminating AIDS/HIV, malaria and other major diseases by 2015.

Measured against these goals, Indonesia, like most other large Asian countries, seems to have done well. Many African countries are moving further away from the goals that world leaders pledged to attain during their summit before the turn of the millennium.

But it is hardly time for us to pat ourselves in the back.

For a country that prides itself on being blessed with an abundance of natural resources, being 112th on the list is not something to brag about. We are trailing behind many countries that are not as well-endowed as ours.

This is one of those occasions when we feel that being good is not good enough. As one UNDP staffer in Jakarta has stated, "Indonesia is on track, but it needs to do more to achieve the Millennium Development Goals."

Statistics, being the science of aggregation, hide the real tragic stories of the millions of individuals who are unfortunate to be on the bottom rung of development.

The 7 percent of the population who are in abject poverty (defined as living on less than US$1 a day), for example, translates into 15 million people. Each of these individuals has a tragic story to tell about their fate.

The statistics also hide the tragedy of mothers who have lost their lives after giving birth, of children being deprived of school because their parents are too poor, girls unable to go to school because their brothers have priority, of people who are dying because they have no access to decent and affordable health care, and of the consequences on our lives because of our own neglect of the environment.

The challenge for Indonesia, and for its leaders, is so immense that it would be completely wrong for us to be complacent at what we have achieved thus far.

The sad reality about Indonesia is that no government official or politician today is talking about Millennium Development Goals, or what Indonesia should be doing to achieve them. With just about every official and politician in the country concentrating on next year's general election, it appears that everything in Indonesia will stop in 2004. Even the poverty eradication program, and the five-yearly National Development Program (Propenas), both stop at 2004. No one, it seems, is looking beyond 2004, let alone to 2015 when most of the Millennium Development Goals should be achieved.