Migration in eastern Indonesia

This is the first of two articles on the political impact of migration in eastern provinces, prepared by Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, a researcher at the Center for Social and Cultural Studies, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

JAKARTA (JP): Eastern Indonesia, a region of distinct natural beauty with a heterogeneous population and diverse cultures, became a topic of public discussion among academics and development specialists after the government announced in 1990 that it would pay more attention to the development of the region.

Generally speaking, the New Order government's official statistics clearly indicate an increase in people's welfare in eastern Indonesian provinces. However, the social and economic inequality between regencies and groups of the population is also increasing.

Like in other parts of the country, the social tension and political conflicts that have intensified in several places in eastern region over the last five years are strong indications that genuine sustainable development is not taking place there, proving that the ideology of development adopted by the state in the last three decades has failed.

About two decades ago, a Dutch geographer, Milan J. Titus, argued that interregional migration in Indonesia reflected different degrees of social and economic development between regions.

Titus' findings significantly demonstrate the need to examine the process of uneven development in Indonesia, particularly the forces which have given rise to such a development process, and which seem to be perpetuating it.

Major studies on migration in the country, however, have tended to overlook the social and political dimensions and emphasized more the demographic and economic aspects of population mobility.

This article attempts to look beyond these conventional approaches. The unequal power relations between central and provincial governments will be elaborated as a crucial factor in explaining the social and political structures that contextualize migration in the eastern region.

The ramifications of migration, as reflected by the disparity of economic activities between regions as well as between different groups of population, indicate that political and cultural integration is still far from being resolved in the region. Recent communal conflicts between the population of different ethnic groups and religions in Maluku and West Kalimantan, for example, obviously indicate accumulated social resentments among the locals and the migrants from a different ethnic background.

The final part of this article will discuss the prospect of alternative regional development approaches, which convey the heterogeneity of the political and cultural aspects of the people.

During the New Order reign, the national political system, which was highly centralistic and tightly controlled by then president Soeharto and the military, directly influenced the relationships between the central government and provincial administrations. In 1974, the government promulgated Law No. 5, which designated the legal framework for the role and authority of provincial administrations.

According to the law, provincial administrations exercise only powers that have been granted to them by the central government. The national government, represented by the Ministry of Home Affairs, has the responsibility to supervise and support all development activities carried out in the provinces.

In 1976, the government established local Development Planning Boards (Bappeda) to strengthen the provincial administrations' capability in planning and coordinating development programs. In theory, Bappeda should perform a number of functions, such as formulating basic regional development plans, coordinating planning among sectoral line agencies, drafting regional development budgets and monitoring as well as evaluating development activities at the provincial level. In practice, however, what neatly seems to be bottom-up planning, does not really take place. The actual planning still largely follows a top-down process. Development programs and projects at the provincial level are mostly designed and planned by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) and various ministerial offices in Jakarta.

The primacy of population sizes as the major criteria for the allocation of provincial budgets not surprisingly ensures that the largest proportion of the budget pours into Java. Furthermore, this imbalance is reinforced by the lack of an incentive criterion, such as tax efforts, and the failure to consider regional potential in fund allocations. The financial transfer from the center to the regions plays no significant role in reducing the existing regional disparity, particularly between Java and the outer islands.

The implications of the New Order government's bureaucratic arrangement, particularly on the suppression of local people's political participation, are very obvious. The political sphere of society at the regional levels is very limited and the local people are marginalized.

A recent study by a research team of the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI) indicates that the central government's regional autonomy project conducted in 1996 mainly dealt with the technical administrative aspects of regional autonomy and clearly would not have a significant effect on existing center-regional relationships.

At the provincial level, resentment of being "economically squeezed" by the central government is also prevalent among people in the provinces rich with natural resources, such as Aceh, Riau, North Sulawesi, Irian Jaya and provinces in Kalimantan.

The flourishing polarizing sentiments, originating from ethnic and religious self-identification, perhaps are also natural human responses to the current climate of political uncertainty.

A more anthropological observation on local society and culture suggests that the imposition of the Village Law of 1979 significantly transformed the remaining local social institutions based on (adat) customary laws. However, the push for integration and unity was not without opposition from local adat society, religious groups and other interest groups. But the political authority and military strength of the central government ensured the relatively smooth implementation of the policy.

Adat, in people's minds, is not a means to preserve ethnic identity but is perceived as a means to maintain their cultural and moral legitimacy in the face of dominant external state and culture. People's responses, within any local group, in fact, provide a forum for the constant reformation and reconstitution of adat and group identity within the wider political and economic environment.

A recent national gathering of adat leaders representing about 50 different ethnic groups in Jakarta reflected the increasingly significant role of indigenous people in national politics.

The unequal relationships between the state and civil society, as well as between the center and the regions, however, have been strongly questioned following the collapse of the Soeharto regime in May 1998. A new political equation is apparently on the horizon, and its implication for a future path of regional development is therefore inevitable.

In terms of population size, according to the 1995 Intercensal Population Survey, eastern Indonesia comprises only 13.3 percent of the country's total population. From a national demographic perspective, eastern Indonesia comprises nine provinces -- those located in Sulawesi, the Maluku islands, Irian Jaya (formerly West Papua) and the Nusa Tenggara islands.

Population density varies. Maluku and Irian Jaya, for example, together are the least densely populated areas in Indonesia. In 1995, the density of population in both the Maluku islands and Irian Jaya was only eight people per square kilometer, as compared to 850 in Java and an average of 95 throughout Indonesia.

Javanese dominate the bureaucracy in Jakarta and they, therefore, perceive the eastern provinces as empty land. Such a perception was apparently behind the decision in the 1980s to redirect the transmigration policy to those provinces. The decision to move transmigrants to eastern provinces significantly contributed to an increase in the transmigration budget because the transportation costs became very expensive.

The impact of the central government's decision to bolster the transmigration program in the eastern provinces is clearly shown by the positive net migration trends since 1980 in designated destination provinces, such as Irian Jaya, Maluku, Southeast and Central Sulawesi. In-migrations apparently also play an important role in the relatively high annual population rate of growth in those provinces. On the other hand, in provinces like North and South Sulawesi, as well as in West and East Nusa Tenggara, negative net migration has also contributed to the low level of annual population growth in those provinces. As a result of the collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s, the national budget for the transmigration program was drastically cut back, thereby substantially reducing the number of transmigrant families that had originally been planned for resettlement.

Window: Major studies on migration in the country, however, have tended to overlook the social and political dimensions and emphasized more the demographic and economic aspects of population mobility.