Land-love strong among villagers

Land-love strong among villagers

A complaint lodged recently by North Sumatran farmers with the
House of Representatives over their land, which is being
appropriated for a plantation, is indicative of the acute and
ever present land issue found throughout the country. Sociologist
Kastorius Sinaga points out the strong land-love phenomenon of
villagers as one of the factors behind the recurring issue.

JAKARTA (JP): The struggle for land reclamation launched by
poor farmers from the Parbuluhan village in Dairi Regency, North
Sumatra, has drawn much public attention. As recently reported,
the farmers are still continuing their campaign over their rights
to over 1300 hectares of communal land which is being acquired
for a huge plantation.

Viewed from a development perspective, the farmers' resistance
seems to be counterproductive. The existence of an agro-
industrial plantation in this remote and underdeveloped village
will afford a long and glowing list of benefits. This is
considered as a sine qua non of progress and much will
undoubtedly be achieved, including new jobs, more productive land
and the beginning of other income generating activities.

This is the reason why both the Jakarta-based agro-industry
company and development bureaucrats regard the farmers'
resistance as resistance to change, which is similar to a
resistance to developmental progress.

Therefore, it is interesting to scrutinize those factors which
usually give rise to the farmers' resistance to development with
respect to land release.

In recent years, cases related to land conflicts, particularly
those followed by resettlement plans, have emerged in a number of
urban and rural areas. In spite of different project objectives,
displaced villagers always demonstrated a similar attitude,
namely, resistance to any project for a dam, reservoir or
plantation.

This widespread attitude led observers to believe that
resistance to land release as well as to involuntary
resettlement, especially induced by development plans, is not a
particularly recent phenomenon. Rather, as argued by a noted
sociologist from the World Bank, Michael Cernea, such an attitude
is a normal or even an expected phenomenon.

However, factors leading to their resistance differ from one
case to another. In some cases, external factors in the form of
alliances between the affected groups and external parties, such
as NGOs, play a dominant role in the emergence of a protracted
resistance movement. In other cases, internal factors come to the
foreground as the predominant cause of the resistance.

In line with the perspective of internal factors, the roots of
the resistance movement among urban dwellers are manifestly
different from those in rural communities. In the case of land
release or forced resettlement in urban areas, the degree of
individual deprivation in the form of "sudden" losses of property
rights and of "security" over minimal subsistence led to
collective resistance.

Land

For rural communities, resistance movements to land release
plans are deeply rooted in existing local cultures and social
beliefs about the meaning of land. With this in mind, one of the
well-known reasons for resistance to development in rural areas
is the love-of-land and love-of-birth-place phenomenon.

Of course, this sense is quite possibly a universal human
characteristic. But it is most particularly significant for the
traditional societies like those in rural areas. The love-of-land
phenomenon takes on a significance far greater for rural
societies than for their urban counterparts, where land is viewed
as just another "commodity" to be sold and bought.

We can understand why Opung Lira Simbolon, one of the farmer
delegates from the Parbuluhan village, sobbed when he said, "We
don't want compensation, no matter how much the company is
willing to pay. The land has been handed down through generations
and we intend to pass it on to our grandchildren" (The Jakarta
Post, Feb. 22, 1995).

For Parbuluhan's villagers, and for almost all of Indonesia's
rural inhabitants, land signifies a place around which all of
their activities revolve. For the villagers, who are
predominantly farmers, their land is not only their main
productive base but, more fundamentally, it is the root of their
culture, history and collective identity. In the Batak area,
where Parbuluhan village is located, the name of a village is
usually adopted from the family name of a clan, and the land
symbolizes a collective existence or clan identity.

The land, where the villagers live now and that is to be
confiscated for a project site, was handed down over generations.
The villagers perceive their land to be a holy place where their
ancestors are buried. The farmers resistance expresses a
defensive attitude, whose origin lies in local beliefs and their
own history and mythology.

All these can play an important hindering or encouraging role
in resisting outside interference. Moreover, if unjust treatment
in the form of intimidation, arrest, military-led physical force
are used to release the land, as experienced by the Parbuluhan
villagers, resistance might turn into a radical protest movement.

Thus, all related parties, particularly the government, should
be aware of and careful in handling the resistance movement now
being launched by the Parbuluhan villagers and avoid the search
for a "scapegoat".

The writer is a lecturer in the Social Sciences Postgraduate
Program at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.