Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

You read:>Indonesia has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with output expected to top 6 per cent this year.

Wow, you might think, until you discover that according to the government there are at least 13.33% of the population living below Indonesia's poverty line, a line set artificially low through the manipulation of statistics.
.
The definition of poverty is subject to a number of factors, and it took until last year, when the Central Statistics Bureau (BPS) came up with the figure of 13.33%, for the United Nations Development Programme to adopt a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Rather than an annual income being the main, if not sole, criteria of poverty assessment, the MPI considers ten factors,

In broad terms, these are : Education – Schooling, Child Enrolment: Health – Child Mortality, Nutrition: Living Standards – Electricity, Sanitation, Drinking Water, Floor, Cooking Fuel, Assets. Using these, the MPI Indonesia country report suggests that the true poverty rate is 20.8%, and two-thirds of them are rural dwellers.

The House of Representatives has presumably borne this in mind as it has proposed a new Poverty Alleviation Bill – and kudos to them for finally thinking of the folk they are supposedly representing.

Whereas the BPS stipulates that poverty is a condition where people are unable to meet their basic needs, Regional Representatives Council deputy chair Laode Ida said on Wednesday. that the government’s bill will apply a broader concept of basic needs.

The bill states that basic needs consist of food, clothing, home, health, education, job opportunities and social security, as well as social services.

Great stuff, but they need to be provided and therein lies a major problem: the road to good intentions is potholed.

Or a road has collapsed – and again after repairs (six months later!) .

Or there's a shortage of ferries between Java and Sumatra leaving 2,000 lorries some with perishable goods, stuck for up to two weeks on either side of the Sunda Strait. The current queue has partly been caused by a fatal fire on a ferry a month ago.

And why does all this happen?

The Economist has one answer, or rather a host of them.

Indonesia is still shockingly ill-integrated into the global economy. Besides shoddy infrastructure, it has an economy distorted by subsidies, a business climate hostile to foreign investment and a bureaucracy and legal system shot through with corruption.

There's at least one failing not mentioned here: incompetence.

As I've noted before, apart from a minority of once rich kids who managed to get a degree from a foreign university, there are few bureaucrats, politicians, or other adults who can think of the consequences of their actions. Everything is viewed through blinkers and although grandiose schemes are two-a-penny, few actually get off the ground.

It's only a dozen years since newly enfranchised President Habibie granted the citizenry the right to freely express themselves and that is something which cannot be taught. The teachers and parents of today's students are mostly still hidebound by the strictures of silence and acquiesence imposed by 'the Father of Development', Suharto.

President SBY has expressed similar sentiments, although, as the Post notes, much of the blame can be laid at his door for his laidback leadership style.

Take the bottleneck between Java and Sumatra pictured above. It's not as if it was unexpected. Around 20 passenger ships, most of which are more than 20-years-old – and often are out of commission for repairs – transport about 350,000 people and 25,000 vehicles between Merak and Bakauheni every day.

As long ago as 1965 a rail and road suspension bridge was proposed for the 30-kilometer (18-mile) Sumba Strait connecting Java and Sumatra.

The concept for the bridge first emerged in the 1960s, but it was dropped due to a change in political leadership. When B.J Habibie became Research and Technology Minister in the 1980s, the idea was again heard but never implemented due to the 1997 economic crisis. The plan re-emerged when engineering professor Wiratman sounded it in 1997.

As the bridge is [to be] located in the Sunda Strait, which is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, its construction would include four important phases involving hydrographic, oceanographic, geologic, seismological, climatological and environmental aspects.

The proposal was revived in 2007 when a consortium lead by PT. Artha Graha, headed by Tomy Winata who is not only politically and military wired but also a noted financier of human rights violations. (Note: in an interview with the New York Daily News conducted in 2009 he makes no mention of his Suhartoist past.) There is no further news of the proposed start date – next year.
(map and cross section of the planned bridge)

But there is news of another grandiose scheme which, based on past excesses, could be not only an abject failure in economic terms but an environmental calamity of the first order.

But more of that in part 2.