Where
there’s sugar, there are ants
Congratulations!
Maybe
you’re reading this squashed in traffic or wading through blackwater while
coughing up smog but hey, take it easy.
Really, life is good.
Forget
increasing prices and decreasing services, high inflation and low wages. Ignore roadblocks and rubbish, corruption
and collusion – you’re doing OK.
How do I
know? Because of the Javanese proverb ada
gula ada semut, the title of this BTW. Why else are foreign leaders taking
Jakarta junkets and overseas economists making three-day analyses?
Would VIPs
like UK Prime Minister David Cameron be jostling for a photo op with the
President in a peci if they couldn’t sniff cash in the kampongs?
These
altruists have been telling us we’re doing fine, better than most. Investing used to be risky, now it’s
frisky.
Let’s jump
in. Hotels will be overflowing with
carpetbaggers drawn to the newfound equatorial Shangri-La. They’ll pay millions for a bed. Even more for one in a room.
We used to
be an Asian Tiger before bounding into a fiscal pit. Now we’ve clawed ourselves
out and become BRICed in with the economic elephants of Brazil, Russia, India
and China.
That’s what
the boosters have been shouting during their Big Durian stopovers: The
Archipelago’s awash with rupiah and the friendly foreigners want to bail us
out.
Behind this
newly minted interest are statistics showing bulging wallets among the growing
middle classes, folk who earn above US$ 3,000 a year. That’s Rp 2.3 million a month.
Sounds good
until put into context: The World Bank says half the nation’s population earns
just one tenth of that sum.
So if you’ve got a full-time rewarding job count your fortunes. You’re
in a minority. More than 30 million are underemployed; another nine million
have no work at all.
When you
stagger home for a couple of hours before heading back to your sweatshop take
stock of your new prosperity.
Is there
milk in the fridge, bread on the table? Has your Honda got four wheels, not
two? Is a flat screen TV on the wall
hiding fractures in the plaster? These
are the economists’ markers of prosperity.
Well, lucky
us. I fit the demographic though without all the goods. No kids or maid, but
some relatives to support – a cultural duty foreign economists exclude from
their equations.
Apart from
bread (home made), food is from the local markets. No mortgage or debts, yet we need at least Rp 5 million a month
for the basics. Any extra income is
spent on maintaining a jerrybuilt house, which is what most of our neighbors
are doing.
This isn’t
a whinge list. I’m satisfied with our lot. The alluring archipelago has riches
that money can’t buy.
Its good
guests are now stopping by, even if Jakarta’s just a refuel-point on a flight
path to somewhere else. Pity they
prioritize selling above buying. Sad
the smoke of rhetoric has clouded the view past Jl Thamrin to the problems
beyond.
Police
motorcade outriders would have kept the beggar babes at bay but the visitors
should have noticed shopping malls marketing glossy imports, though not the
crumbling kerbs where rombeng (second-hand traders) flog their scavenged
trash.
They’d know
the power resides in Jakarta. They
wouldn’t know that in many villages there’s no power, real or
metaphorical. Even in cities like
Malang flicking a switch doesn’t mean a light will ignite.
Spending
time in this diverse and demanding nation would reveal how and where the West
can best help. Investing in infrastructure would be a good start. Rich, poor or in-between, we all need better
transport systems.
Buying more
finished goods (batik’s fantastic) instead of raw materials would help create
jobs. Offering tens of thousands of
overseas scholarships to the talented poor would yield future dividends for
givers and takers
So what did
we get out of the PM’s visit – guns or butter? Apparently the former as the
Brits may now lift their arms sales embargo.
Good trade
Mr Cameron, your arsenals will stay busy.
But why do we need more weapons? Surely not to control the envious
majority hoping to enjoy their nation’s world famous economic boom? Duncan Graham
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