Incentives needed to instill pioneering spirit of Javanese

JAKARTA (JP): Incentives are needed to instill a greater pioneering spirit among the ethnic Javanese population living in Java so they will resettle on other islands, experts say.

Speakers at a seminar on population movement concluded yesterday that the Javanese people would willingly move from the densely-populated island to other regions if there was a guarantee they could enjoy the same, modern facilities they had in their places of origin.

The speakers also agreed that a kind of "cultural engineering" was required to invigorate the Javanese people, who are known for their low mobility. This cultural engineering would hopefully instill them with the pioneering spirit possessed by the Bugis in Sulawesi and Minang and Batak in Sumatra who dared to try their luck and migrate to other regions.

"Java's appeal has caused a brain drain in areas outside the island," Minister of Transmigration Siswono Yudohusodo, said in his opening speech.

He said that overcrowding had also increased the levels of unemployment, deforestation and crime in Java.

Siswono believes that it is very possible to develop the pioneering spirit among the Javanese and the Sundanese, two main ethnic tribes living in Java, given the fact that they can adapt well to new situations. He thought they could achieve this despite their traditional point of view concerning the place of birth.

He added that a recent study showed that 87 percent of the Javanese people were born, raised and died in the same regency.

The minister said that investors could also be lured to put money in other areas outside Java by a number of methods, such as lowering the tax rate on new investments.

Siswono said that Java has already accommodated a total of 62.3 percent of foreign and domestic investments in the country, which lead to the urbanization to the island.

Siswono was among the speakers of the seminar with the theme of "Developing the Pioneering Culture in People's Mobility." This program is part of the government's efforts to rejuvenate its program to resettle people from Java to other islands.

The other speakers were Minister of Population Haryono Suyono/Chairman of National Family Planning Board (BKKBN), noted scholar Abdurrahman Wahid, Sultan Hamengkubuwono X (King of the Yogyakarta Sultanate) and Jakob Oetama, editor-in-chief of the Kompas daily.

The seminar, which was attended by some 250 scholars, government officials and members of professional organizations concludes today.

Colonial time

Abdurrahman told the participants that an adequate infrastructure in the transmigration areas, such as schools, post offices, shops and public health centers, would encourage people to move through their own initiatives. He said local leaders could be invited to witness such transmigration sites so they would tell other people about the benefit of moving to the new areas.

"What the people need is the sense of being a part of a town," he said.

Sultan Hamengkubuwono told the seminar that movements among the Javanese people to other islands had occurred during the Dutch colonization, but such migration was forced upon the people by the colonizers.

He said that colonialism had also changed the culture of the Javanese people who used to be dynamic and active -- the characteristics of the pioneering spirit -- to become static.

The Sultan said that the conquest of the coastal areas by the Dutch had forced the Javanese people, who once had a great maritime spirit, to become tillers of the soil.

About 80 percent of Indonesia's 180 million people live in Java, which has a population density of 814 people for every square kilometer. This is compared to an average of 93 people nationally, according to a 1992 population survey.

Java is one of the most densely populated island in the world and has already shown some signs of being unable to cope with the ever increasing number of people. The most notable examples are the flooding which takes place during the rainy season because of overdevelopment, and the severe water shortages in the dry seasons.