Human concept of growth

President Soeharto, in his annual National Day Address to the House of Representatives, likes to cite not only economic but also social indicators in relation to the people's welfare. In his latest address of state, last Wednesday, the President cited various economic indicators of the impressive achievements of the nation's economic development over the past 25 years, such as the increase in the gross domestic product, per-capita income and progress in various sectors of the economy.

However, his account also detailed progress in the other aspects of human development, such as life expectancy, school enrollment, literacy, health and women's participation in the labor force.

Thus the holistic development paradigm which has been promoted by the United Nations through its annual Human Development Report and Human Development Index and by many other multilateral development agencies is not something new to Indonesia. In fact, the final goal of Indonesia's national development is based on the broadest perspective of human development; that is, a just and materially and spiritually prosperous society. The government plans to achieve the final goal on the basis of three pillars: growth, equity and stability.

The formidable task, though, is how to realize the proclaimed ideal through stages of development which in Indonesia are divided into five-year development plans. Obviously, as the development process has reached only the second year of the sixth five-year development plan, there is still a wide gap between the long-term ideal and the reality.

Having said that, we do not wish to imply that the process of development in Indonesia has always been fully on the right path towards the final goal. As the President himself admitted last week, mistakes have sometimes occurred. The government, faced with competing short and medium-term objectives, has sometimes departed from the path towards the ideal. On occasion it has made growth the top priority at the expense of equity. At other times, stability has been given precedence over the other two principles.

Indeed, it is not so easy to strike a harmonious equilibrium between the three principles. The fact is that no sustained improvement in human well-being is possible without economic growth. However, high economic growth rates do not automatically translate into higher levels of human development.

The 50th anniversary of our national independence is a good opportunity, not only to revise upwards the targets of our sixth five-year development plan, but also to plan more concerted efforts towards achieving a more desirable link between economic growth and human development.

While the government has made human resource development one of the top priorities in development programs, its concept has been more in the terms of human resources as an input of production and not yet in the broadest perspective that fully encompasses productivity, equity, sustainability and empowerment.

Human development in the broadest sense requires, not only large investments in education and health, but also the achievement of a more equitable distribution of income and assets and the provision of more social services by the state.

The empowerment of the people, as certain ministers have pronounced more than once but without clear meaning, means enabling the people to exercise choices in the political, social and economic spheres. These are, we think, some of the issues which need to be mulled over in the process of revising the targets of the current five-year development plan.