The value of books
It is one of the great paradoxes of life in Indonesia that although better learning standards have long been recognized as a basic necessity for promoting progress, books have always been classified as luxury items that must be taxed accordingly. This was true in the years immediately after independence in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the number of higher education institutions throughout the country could be counted on the fingers of one hand and academics were looked up to with great reverence. It is still true today, when colleges and universities number into the hundreds and university students into the hundreds of thousands.
For this reason, and particularly in this time of crisis, one should not be surprised to see imported paperbacks on general subjects such as art, politics, philosophy or history bearing price tags of hundreds of thousands of rupiah, or even a million rupiah or more, which is more than many university lecturers make in a month. Books on highly specialized subjects obviously cost a lot more. Locally printed books by Indonesian authors are significantly more affordable but even these are too expensive for many students.
President B.J. Habibie's concurrence, which he publicly stated at the opening of the 14th congress of the Association of Indonesian Publishers this week, that the 10 percent value-added tax on locally printed books should be abolished, deserves to be commended. As association chairman Rozali Usman remarked on the same occasion, throughout the Asia-Pacific region "it is only our beloved country that applies a value-added tax on books". The association is campaigning for all taxes on books to be lifted. This, according to Rozali, is in line with recommendations made by the International Publishers Association in Geneva and the Asia-Pacific Publishers Association in Tokyo, of which his association is a member.
While lifting taxes that have been imposed on locally printed books will undoubtedly help bring down their high prices, much more will have to be done to bring books within reach of most Indonesians, students in particular. There is, for example, the problem of copyright infringement. Book piracy, as the practice is commonly known, is one of the major problems that is discouraging Indonesian authors -- scholars, academics and university lecturers among them -- from publishing their work in book form.
Corruption and collusion in the publication of textbooks for schools is another major problem that is hampering progress in education. As Habibie rightly pointed out, a conducive business climate must be established for the book publishing industry because the sector is of decisive importance in determining the teaching-learning process. Publishers have openly complained that the contracts to publish school textbooks have so far invariably been won by people well-connected to the authorities. Corruption in this sector is believed to be so bad that Indonesian Corruption Watch appealed to the World Bank to stop funding the procurement of textbooks for junior high schools until the problem was thoroughly investigated.
Last but not least, the current economic crisis notwithstanding, the government would do well to consider reducing the import tax on imported books and look elsewhere for income. And while it might be true to say that university textbooks deserve to be given priority in such a tax-reduction program, the merits that books carry in terms of the specific needs of their readers, or users, is difficult to measure.
Admittedly, it may be difficult under present circumstances to give books their rightful place in our crisis-ridden society. In the longer term, however, making books accessible to as many Indonesians as possible must become a major point in our national program.