The rubble of the emerging middle class

The rubble of the emerging middle class

JAKARTA (JP): We hear about them constantly, we see them more often than we might want, but who are these people called the emerging middle class? A walk through my neighborhood might help sort the question out.

None of this idyllic Bali village life stuff, or the devout life of Flores Catholics eking out a living on what Westerners (those people who have reportedly ruined Indonesia) deem a paradise. No, my neighborhood gives a better picture of what the country is like. All this in a little corner of big, smelly Jakarta.

I live on the fringe of the much talked about emerging middle class. Less than 300 meters northwest from my dusty street is a kampong where the supply of labor -- "human resources" in Five- year Development terms -- rest their weary heads after a long day of sitting outside middle class houses, guarding them against their brothers.

Sliding back my reinforced gate, I am greeted by a row of small houses with negligible gardens and a strange absence of satellite dishes. Most of the houses have been demolished or renovated in the last year because the featureless group of people emerging into the middle class add a second floor to announce their arrival. The street isn't paved. It was once. But, because it has been dug up five times in the last six months to put in water and electricity each time a house is renovated, it is now a dirt track.

Cars swerve around potholes and mounds of building debris which has been left in the street as a monument to progress. One renovated but long-empty house advertises its selling point as a park view. Its a pity that the park is filled with its refuse and debris. The piles of garbage continually smolder because some one has reasoned they will burn-off the used bricks by setting fire to the innumerable plastic bags underneath.

It isn't until you walk a few streets south that the transition hits you. The small, one-story houses gradually give way to larger and more ornate structures built on the same size lots. What remains of garden space has been paved over to make way for the Kijang or the remodeled VW Bug, which just make it under the huge song birds entrapped in puny cages hanging from the eaves. But there is still some of the charm of rural Indonesia left. Chickens compete with the rats in the gutters for scraps, while stray dogs and cats wearily watch you pass, ever alert for the expected kick or thrown stone. Roosters crow behind bamboo bars to remind the emerging middle class of their roots.

Walk a few blocks further and the streets get wider and the houses taller. The open space in front of the marble monstrosities is so small that there often isn't enough room to park both the BMW and the Jeep Cherokee. The BMW is relegated to the street because the pampered Jeep, only used on weekends when the entire clan goes four-wheel driving on the manicured roads near the company villa in Puncak, must rest safely tucked beneath its fluorescent orange car cover.

The newly emerged show their true colors along these streets. There is a three turreted house, each tower painted mango orange, rambutan red and canary yellow respectively, that resembles a kid's building block experiment after too many red Smarties. Up the road is a towering blue building with ground to sky windows done in a USS Minnow motif, complete with a two meter life ring over the front door. It is probably good Feng shui.

This is individualism, a sure sign that the corrupting "East of Eden" has been beamed into too many living rooms.

The Indonesia of today ends on these streets. The emerging have emerged, found or poached an identity, and buttressed themselves behind their thick, inlaid granite fences. On the street, however, life goes on like it does a few blocks closer to the kampong. Maids gossip, cats prowl and the young jaga prance about showing off their courting skills. Life hasn't changed much for these people. They still scream "hello mister, where you go?" and giggle when you answer in Indonesian. The only difference between them and their cousins in rural Indonesia is that they now know how to say "f--- you" and use their new found knowledge quite frequently.

The future of Indonesia is reflected further along in the neighborhood. Here, row upon row of formidable houses on large plots silently stand along transplanted-palm vistas. These mansions, however, are empty. Their ornate cement work is already crumbling and their marble and glass entrance ways are a cold welcome to any of the emerged who dare afford to rent them.

It is a long walk from my small house to the mansions -- if you don't count it in kilometers. At both ends, though, none of the roads are paved, the electricity goes out as often as the inhabitants' teenagers, and the parks are filled with the rubble of the emerging middle class.

-- Jim Plouffe