Rice -- The measure of all things in Indonesia

Rice -- The measure of all things in Indonesia

By Andreas Baenziger

JAKARTA: Do they sometimes have chicken with the rice? All Rita can do is smile. Yes, she says, the children ask every day what has happened to the chicken or tofu. It is hard to make them understand that things are not like they used to be. Only the baby gets milk, and then only once a day. All they have money for is rice, rice and yet more rice.

Rita teaches English at a technical college. Until a year ago her family was part of the up-and-coming Indonesian middle class. The spacious house in the sultanate town of Yogyakarta bears witness to that, as does the car standing outside the door.

Not that it is used much nowadays, apart from when Rita travels across country to buy something cheaper in one place or sell something dearer in another, so as to boost the family income.

In Indonesia, you can no longer live on a public employee's salary. Javanese people do not like admitting something like that in front of a stranger, but Rita is translating an article from Kompas newspaper which reckons it all out. Even the paper costs Rp 32,000 a month, but after all you need information.

Nandang, Rita's husband, has managed to turn his hobby into a profession. He breeds songbirds, a kind of national sport in Java, where songbird contests are often held. Nandang has a trophy on the cupboard in the front room.

He teaches his birds to sing properly by playing them a tape of the previous year's winner. Then whistling and singing resound from the balcony and the entrance porch, where Nandang's pigeons reply.

But who has money for songbirds these days? A small workshop where Nandang made high-class birdcages was forced to close. After the rupiah collapsed, the price of imported parts rose fivefold. Nandang had to send his workers home. He no longer contributes to the family income.

In the massive economic crisis that has hit Indonesia, the price of rice, the staple food, has become the measure of all things. A year ago, Rita says, you could buy 20 kilograms of rice for 20,000 rupiah. Now it is perhaps seven.

The student protests in the last few days were not directed only at the slow pace of democratization. They were a protest, too, against the difficult living conditions under which more and more people are suffering.

"Down with prices, down with President Habibie," was one slogan chanted by student demonstrators, whose revolt against the establishment was supported by unemployed people and youths from the poorer districts of Jakarta.

Not long ago, Rita visited her parents in the village, who were celebrating the pregnancy of her younger sister. They had invited about 40 people from the neighborhood. Around a hundred turned up. Formerly, people you hardly knew would not have come along without being invited. Now the pangs of hunger had driven them to do so.

Those who one year ago were part of the Indonesian middle class are now poor, and those who were poor a year ago are now starving. Just reckon it up: a family whose breadwinner earns the statutory minimum wage of Rp 200,000 in Jakarta, has to spend 80 percent of its income on rice. (Two hundred thousand rupiah is about 25 dollars, but the unrealistically low exchange rate permits no direct comparison)

At best, that is enough to fill the family stomachs, but no longer to provide a balanced diet, especially for children.

The situation is so bad that many people are withdrawing their children from school.

Samir, for example, says he has not sent his three school-age children to their lessons for three months now, because he can no longer scrape together the modest fees.

Until recently he managed to keep his head above water by supplying kerosene to households in a Jakarta suburb. As far as he is concerned, not only has the price of rice risen but his turnover has dropped by a quarter. Since kerosene is the fuel used for cooking, that can only mean that people are cooking less.

In September there was a sudden supply crisis. Nobody can explain why. In fact there has always been enough rice in the country, the problem is one of poverty, not quantity. But suddenly the whole supply chain from Bulog, the state import monopoly, to small traders went haywire.

People were saying that wholesalers were hoarding rice in the hope of higher prices. Rumors started circulating that corrupt civil servants had sold state-subsidized rice to Malaysia. Panic almost broke out when looting and hunger revolts were reported from several parts of the country.

Since then the situation has intensified. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was forced to revise downward its forecasts for the second harvest.

It now estimates a rice shortfall of 5.1 million tones for the agricultural year. This means that Indonesia will have to import a quarter of the rice that comes onto the world market.

The Soeharto regime, swept away by a protest movement in May this year, liked to boast that Indonesia had achieved self- sufficiency in rice in 1984. Sadly, this achievement has long since melted away.

To blame was the government's policy of industrialization, which neglected agriculture and claimed more and more fertile ground. To make things worse, the Southeast Asian economic crisis, which hit no country as hard as Indonesia, coincided exactly with the drought induced by the weather phenomenon El Nio, which caused the harvest to fail.

At that point even farmers found themselves obliged to buy rice, meaning they had less money to buy seeds and fertilizer.

The second achievement of the Soeharto era was said to be that the number of people living below the poverty line had sharply declined. However, this success, too, is now dissolving into thin air.

Official estimates assume that by the end of this year between 100 and 200 million Indonesians will be under the poverty line -- a poverty line which is in any case set extremely low, at just seven dollars per person per month. It is in no way realistic now that the all-determining price of rice has reached world levels.

A hundred million poor people is a hundred million starving people is a hundred million potential troublemakers, looters and pillagers. The first rice disturbances have provided a foretaste of what can be expected unless the situation is defused.

Attacks on the Chinese minority which has dominated trade for decades -- and thereby provided a service to the rest of the community -- show the extent to which social peace and peace between Indonesia's ethnic groups are endangered.

The tremendous potential for conflict pent up in this mass poverty has frightened not only the government but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Originally, the IMF had tried to help the ailing tiger back on its feet with some very tough measures -- extremely high interest rates and strict budgetary discipline.

Now, however, it has taken the view that a social net to cushion the alarming consequences of the crisis for people is more important than financial good conduct.

The 43-million-dollar IMF program is moving more and more from being a restructuring program to a program of aid. To avoid mass poverty becoming mass starvation, the government is planning to issue the needy with 10 kilograms of rice per month at Rp 1,000 per kilo.

The number of needy families has been revised upward several times, from one to two, seven and now 17.5 million families. That means 85 millions people, bringing the program close to catering for the hundred million poor the government expects by the end of the year.

A program on this scale would swallow up massive resources, making the stability goal of a balanced budget recede far into the distance. So far, such measures have had no effect. Rice deliveries for the poor arrive occasionally, but by no means regularly.

The government has obviously not specified who should receive subsidized rice. Samir, the kerosene seller, says he sends his wife along whenever he hears that a shipment of cheap rice has arrived. If there is enough, she gets a few kilograms, otherwise she doesn't.

The market, allegedly the incorruptible judge of what is economically reasonable, is reacting with confusion. The rice merchant in Pasar Klender in East Jakarta cannot help much either.

Why is there too little rice one week and more than enough the next? Why do prices vary from day to day, and why did people buy most rice when its was most expensive?

He only knows one thing for sure. His sales have declined, even though rice is the staple food. The Chinese merchant next door, who sells soap, salt, sugar and tea, knows by exactly how much. He sells 60 percent less than he used to do.

The Pasar Klender district chairman sums up the mood of the people. Things are getting worse for them by the day. Virtually all the young people are unemployed. The people up there only think about themselves, they don't care about the problems of ordinary people.

In view of the general plight Indonesia is in, perhaps there is nothing left to stabilize but the rice price.

-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung