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