Population policy

The provisional results of the 2000 Population Census, published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, gave some encouraging as well as disturbing findings. The survey essentially found that we, as a nation, have done quite a good job in slowing down population growth, but a rather appalling one in redistributing the population across the archipelago.

The results of the survey, once the final version comes out, should be taken into consideration when drafting government policies. No policy would be effective unless it took into account the changing demographic conditions. The findings of the 2000 Population Census tells us that some existing policies must be discarded, while others continued, but with some fine-tuning.

One of the most startling discoveries is that Indonesia's population growth has slowed to 1.35 percent a year between 1990 and 2000, from 1.97 percent a decade earlier. This explains why the country's total population is estimated at 203.5 million, well below the previous official estimate of 210 million.

The government's family planning program, in spite of all its shortcomings and controversies, has turned out to be far more effective than most people tend to give credit for in slowing down population growth.

Launched in 1970, the family planning program has been the cornerstone of the economic policies of the regime of then president Soeharto. At the time, Indonesia was singled out as the first country that would fulfill the Malthusian doom prophecy, that its population growth would outpace its capacity to increase food production, with all its catastrophic consequences.

Indonesia has survived, thanks to a combination of slower population growth, faster growth in agriculture, and the oil boom of the 1970s. As the 2000 census indicates, Indonesia's population growth continued to slow down, as we ended the millennium, giving us some breathing space.

However, it would be wrong to soften our stand with regard to bringing the population under control just because it has been growing at a slower rate. The 1.35 percent growth rate still means 2.75 million new mouths to feed every year. It also means that later, the nation would have to provide that many more people education, housing, health care, and jobs. It is as if every year, Indonesia's population grows by almost the entire population of Singapore.

Indonesia is fortunate enough to be endowed with so many natural resources to economically sustain its ever growing population. But these resources are not infinite, and even with technological innovation, there are limitations to agricultural production. If anything, Indonesia must pursue the family planning program with even more vigor than ever before to bring its population to a more manageable level.

Where Indonesia has failed the most, according to the 2000 census, is in redistributing the population which is still heavily concentrated in Java and Bali, even as the government campaigned to promote its transmigration program to resettle people from Java to the outer islands.

The census finds that nearly 60 percent of the 203.5 million population still live in Java. The results also show that the population is concentrated in the heavily industrialized western part of Java, particularly in Jakarta and the towns surrounding the capital. While the population growth in Jakarta, already among the most densely populated city in the world, was rated among the lowest in the 1990s, West Java saw its population growing by 2.17 percent a year during the decade, largely due to, one suspects, migration and urbanization.

The government's goal to redistribute the population more evenly across the archipelago, particularly through its transmigration program, has failed. For the last 50 years, the central government consistently drained money and resources away from the regions into Jakarta and the rest of Java. With this, the population from the regions followed. As a result, the regions were left with little or no talented or skilled people to manage their economies. Transmigration, sending poor and unskilled people away from Java to the regions, has widened the gap between Java and the other regions with regard to skilled workers.

The skewed distribution of Indonesia's population has exposed the gross distortions created by the overtly centralized administration and power in the 55 years since Indonesia became independent. Power, money and economic progress, and talented and skilled workers are all concentrated in Jakarta and Java. Other regions, including natural resource rich provinces like Irian Jaya and Aceh, have remained largely poor and underdeveloped..

Anyone who still has doubts that the regions are ready to take on more responsibility, more authority, and management of their financial resources under the new regional autonomy policy should look closely at the trend in the population census figures, and ask the question: Can we afford to further delay decentralizing the government?