Putting a Human Face on a National Calamity

As we approached the bamboo hut, Aminah looked up to greet us and put her baby down on a mat on the dirt floor. The soil was red and cracked with the drought that foreigners blamed on El Nino, which had taken a heavy toll on Indonesia. She had been picking through mud-colored grains of rice removing the stones. We asked her about her rice harvest. “This is all there is,” she said, pointing to the small mound of kernels. She estimated that it would last less than a month.

Aminah’s husband had left home in search of work. He had found it at a rubber plantation, earning about $1 per day. But the global economic crisis has hit this area near the capital in Jakarta hard, and the plantation had shut down. The cost of rice had gone up 300% in the past four months.

Many of the young women in the village had been working in the garment industries near Jakarta. But they too drifted back after the factories shut down. Added to the drought and the unprecedented rise in the price of food, was the political and social unrest--conditions that keep investors away. The turmoil was so great that even the president of 32 years, Suharto, was forced to resign in May. There were expectations that things would get better, but how long would Indonesians have to wait?

The international community is sympathetic. The U.S. alone has provided nearly $60 million in emergency food assistance, much of it to be delivered directly to communities through U.S. voluntary agencies in “food for work” programs, in which people work on community projects and in special nutrition programs at village clinics in return for a ration of rice. We had come to Aminah’s village to find out if it met the criteria for inclusion in this program.

Aid is helping, but those who have lost their harvest or jobs far exceed the reach of these good intentions. The number of people living below the poverty line has swollen from 27 million to as many as 100 million. Four and a half million children have dropped out of school, hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs in factories around the country, and the economic crisis shows few signs of ending.

More needs to be done, but what? New parties have been established--85 at last count--and a new law providing for press freedom has passed in record time. There is hope in the air, but problems are deep.

How do you change the system of corruption that has been in place for 30 years? As one of my Indonesian friends confided, “It wasn’t just Suharto that was corrupt; everyone shared in the spoils.” For too long, everyone took the “high-cost economy” for granted, meaning that bribes and favors were accepted as part of the cost of doing business. Government, business, public and private sectors adapted. Should we now be surprised that only a handful out of 237 banks are viable? No one cared as long as there was money to be made.

But then the crash. First the drought followed by a run on the banks, currency devaluation and inflation of more than 80%. Reality had intruded.

We can’t control the weather, but the people of Indonesia and the international community can work to build solid institutions that can weather economic storms. Private and public sectors must look beyond short-term profits to support strong political and private institutions and the rule of law.

Farmers deserve to get fair prices. Other sectors need to be promoted with small loans. Indonesia is a country that is still rich in natural resources--fertile land, forests, rich mineral deposits and oil--but it needs to build environmental awareness. We can and must insist on accountability and transparency, on fair wages and workers’ rights and social protection. This is especially true for women and children, who are the first to suffer when times get hard.

We can do much more to ensure fundamental justice. Looking into Aminah’s eyes, I had to ask myself, can we afford not to?