AN AMBASSADOR'S DAY IN HAWKES BAY

Fish donuts, Pancasila and much ado about Islam                       

It’s deep winter. Another cold front is rolling across the South Pacific and nothing escapes.  Flooding is widespread. Landslips close roads.  Aircraft have been grounded.

But not the Air Nelson flight that bumps down between rainsqualls at Napier airport after 55 minutes churning from Wellington.  The plane is a Bombardier; today it’s a flying washing machine.

Indonesian ambassador Antonius Agus Sriyono is hustled into a car by an effervescent Ken Aldred, chair of the local NZ Institute of International Affairs.  He’s a former British arms control negotiator determined that distance from Westminster is no bar to staying close to global affairs.

Today his members want to hear about democracy in Indonesia.  Host and guest snatch a café sandwich.  There are no staff to carry bags, drive or advise.

Despite the weather by 2 pm the basic Havelock North Club has a crowd of 60 (“and most over 60,” quips Mr Aldred) – but that doesn’t mean they’re ill informed or indifferent. 

There’s a chattering of former diplomats, academics and senior government officials who’ve swapped Wellington, Whitehall and Washington for the lush NZ East Coast. 

They’re here to make wine, breed livestock or just enjoy the rustic lifestyle - but these folk aren’t rustics.  Joints creak, but synapses are supple.

Fortunately Mr Sriyono is a liberal Catholic; others might have found the bar and ten slot machines an uncomfortable environment for a speech by a senior government official, particularly during Ramadhan.

“Most Indonesians believe that the individual exists in the context of his family,” says the speaker flicking through the power points.  “The family is the building brick of society. 

“There are cultural differences between Western and Indonesian society.  These differences have implications on their respective understanding of democracy.”

The listening is serious There’s no post-lunch dozing or surreptitious cellphone thumbing.  Then the questions fly

Why is it so difficult to book internal flights in Indonesia using the Internet, asks a man keen to plan his own tour.

The question puzzles.  Ambassadors have staff for such tasks.  There are new direct flights from Auckland to Denpasar, but that’s not the point. Indonesians use travel agents and don’t trust Internet payments, while Kiwis are DIY (do it yourself) people.  A neat illustration of cultural differences.

Is democracy taught in Indonesian schools?  “Yes, but people’s understanding of the word differs. I learn a lot from you regarding egalitarianism – it’s embedded in your culture and life.”

Religious discrimination?  “I’ve never encountered it in community or career.”

Questions target education and religion.  Do State schools teach Islam?  Is Islam incompatible with modernity?  How many women are in Parliament? Are Muslims driving the political agenda?  Who decides who becomes a Muslim leader – are they elected?  Does democracy extend to local government levels?

“I’m an atheist,” states a questioner with religious conviction.  “Is tolerance taught in schools?”  The man is cautioned against expressing his non-belief in public should he visit Indonesia: “I don’t think you’ll have many friends if you do.”

Colonel Andrew Renton-Green, a former intelligence director retrieved his language skills from years studying the Indonesian Army to offer thanks plus tea and biscuits. All plain and homely.  This is a protocol-free zone.

Three stops while heading to the next function.  Before an Indian curry a quick diversion to a second-hand bookshop for texts on democracy and history. This is Ambassadorial heaven – he’s writing two books but stresses: “Only at weekends.”

Another halt is at an Indonesian art and artefacts store.  When owner Trish Dooney imported her first container a confused Javanese dispatcher addressed the goods to Fish Donut.  So that’s become the shop name.

Although the NZ economy slumbers, interest in Indonesian craft has warranted a second outlet on the west coast.

Standing amongst the glittering creative richness of his hometown (he’s from Yogya, the nation’s cultural heart) Mr Sriyono exclaims:  “This makes me feel proud.”

It was an emotion that infected an evening seminar at the State-run tertiary Eastern Institute of Technology where a dozen Indonesians turned up to hear their representative speak.  Among them was Leon Kamal Armond who brought his family to NZ for a better future.

They landed with two suitcases, no contacts but an excess of determination.

Now Leon and his wife are working and their two kids are getting a Kiwi education.  Leon also chairs the local Indonesia Association.

Also among the 60 overcoated guests are young officials from Laos, Timor Leste, Vietnam and Cambodia, in NZ to boost their English skills.  All were keen (particularly those from Myanmar) to know more about their ASEAN neighbor’s venture into this strange land called Democracy

“Pancasila democracy that prevailed during President Suharto’s time in power was an antithesis to liberal democracy and guided democracy,” says the guest speaker exercising the Republic’s newfound freedoms of expression.

“It is unfortunate that for more than three decades (Pancasila democracy) was used as a vehicle for accumulating the elites’ power.  The paradox is that Pancasila democracy was manipulated by an authoritarian government.’

Here the questions are different.  Is terrorism threatening Indonesian democracy?  “It’s a problem, but we can manage.” Are all your difficulties inwards looking?  “Yes

What are the major issues?  “Corruption and how to maintain pluralism. If we fail to be tolerant we’re a failed state.” 

Back at the hotel the Indonesians wait with parochial problems – issues of visa changes and contract clauses. Miscommunication or misrepresentation?  The meeting ends just before midnight with requests for documents. 

“It’s been a rewarding trip, well worthwhile to spend time out of Wellington at the grassroots,” said Mr Sriyono.  His hosts, sipping the region’s fine wines were equally upbeat.   “People here really want to know more about Indonesia.”

(The author travelled courtesy of the Indonesian Embassy.)

First published in The Jakarta Post 20 September 2012

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HOW INDONESIAN MUSLIMS IN NZ RESPONDED TO THE OFFENSIVE VIDEO

 Trashing trash, not critics

While protestors in Sydney were raging against an anti-Islam You Tube video clip, 60 Indonesians in the New Zealand capital were roving Wellington beaches.

Members of the local Indonesian Muslim community spent Sunday morning cleaning bays around Wellington harbor, stuffing broken bottles, torn plastic, dented beer cans, skimpy underwear and even a discarded condom into black bags.

“We are not going to protest the video,” said a surgically-gloved Ruliyati Dewi (below) who coordinated the voluntary garbage gather. “We are different kinds of Muslims who love this country.  

“We want to show that Indonesians are peaceful people who care for the environment.” Although NZ has anti-litter laws, trash is still dumped in beauty spots.

“There’s a story about the Prophet being regularly abused by the same man as he went to pray,” said Ruliyati’s husband Nino Triono (right). “He didn’t retaliate. 

“One day the abuser was absent. The Prophet inquired and found the man sick, so he visited him and prayed for his recovery.  This is an example we must follow and teach our children.”

(For a sophisticated analysis of reaction to the video read ABC broadcaster Waleed Aly's articuate commentary here: 

FOLLOW UP

This letter was published in The Wellingtonian on 20 September:

The Editor:

While Sydney was suffering from violent street protests against the grossly offensive You Tube video, in Wellington 60 Indonesian Muslims were cleaning up the bays around  Point Jerningham

 

Organiser Ruliyati Dewi told me there would be no protests because “we are different kinds of Muslims who love this country”.

 

As a Christian I congratulate my fellow expats on their fine example of tolerance and service. 

Erlinawati Graham, Crofton Downs

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WILL VIDEOS DETER ASYLUM SEEKERS?

Get the message: No Advantage! Right?       

Cartoon: Eureka Street

                 

Potential visitors to Australia can watch You Tubes showing majestic landscapes and fine shopping.  ‘Please come,’ they say, ‘stay and enjoy our beautiful country’s advantages.’

Now there’s another program available, though carrying a starkly different message.  Titled: No Advantage the 40-second clips are pitched to the foreign asylum seekers in Indonesia keen to cross the Indian Ocean but facing tough new laws designed to swamp their plans.

Instead of making it to Sydney they’ll be sent to Manus Island off the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, and the Micronesian island of Nauru.

This tiny South Pacific nation was once known as Pleasant Island, but the videos don’t feature slim couples downing cocktails before dashing into shimmering surf.

Instead the images show basic barrack-style accommodation designed to show that life in these poor and isolated outposts will be bleak and boring. There’ll be guards and wire fences. 

Just in case viewers don’t get the message a stern male voice says “No Advantage” five times.

Nauru, a textbook example of a failed state, has only 10,000 residents, but will house an expected 1,500 asylum seekers. No shopping malls, little to do, nowhere to go. Better stay in Indonesia patiently waiting to leave when officially approved.

But will the 4,000 registered – and a similar number of unregistered - Afghans Iraqis and Sri Lankans, packed in cheap hotels around the Archipelago and sustained by international aid pittances, watch and take heed? 

Unlikely. More than 1,000 men, women and children have drowned trying to reach Australia since 2001 – the latest last month. (Aug)  Such awful deaths should deter all but the most desperate from clambering aboard decrepit fishing boats crewed by kids – but they don’t.

Political and religious freedom, high wages and quality lifestyles make Australia a magnet for the persecuted and fearful.  Along with the US, Canada and a few north European countries, Australia is the great refuge, the promised land of opportunity and safety, work and welfare – a destination worth a few years on a little island, for everyone knows the wait won’t be forever.

The videos are the latest strategy in a complex series of policies rapidly introduced and passed last month (Aug) by the Australian Parliament.

They follow the release of a 162-page report compiled by a three-man expert committee appointed by the government.  This was headed by former defence chief Angus Houston and supported by refugee advocate Paris Aristotle and foreign affairs academic Michael L'Estrange.  It was a trio of such integrity and authority that its views had to be taken seriously.

They were, breaking the deadlock that has gripped Australian politics for the last few years as the boats kept coming. Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has forecast 180,000 boat people a year if the deterrents don’t work.

Houston said his 22 recommendation report was: “Hard-headed, but not hard-hearted; that practicality and fairness should take precedence over theory and inertia; and that the perfect should not be allowed to become the enemy of the good.”

In brief those with money to buy passage on a boat will no longer have a headstart over those with equal or better claims for resettlement but no dollars or desire to risk their lives.

Refugee support groups remain unhappy even though numbers accepted will immediately jump from 13,500 to 20,000 a year.

The previous government of Liberal John Howard shunted asylum seekers off to Nauru and Manus. The boats stopped coming, but the refugees eventually got to Australia and the camps closed.

The Jakarta-based people traffickers reopened their businesses after 2007.  In that year the Labor Party took office and dumped Howard’s so-called Pacific Solution claiming it was cruel to make people wait years to be processed.

But that’s now their fate.  Boat people will remain in Nauru and Manus for as long as they’d stay in Indonesia or Malaysia if waiting to access what the Houston report calls “regular migration pathways and established international arrangement

More likely to deter is a stop to family reunions through the special humanitarian program for those arriving by boat.  In the past men who’ve made the trip and got permanent residence then called in their relatives.

Houston also recommends “bilateral cooperation on asylum seeker issues with Indonesia be advanced as a matter of urgency.”

This reinvents the wheel.  Indonesia and Australia already have long-standing talk tanks.  They include the Bali Process on People Smuggling, co-chaired by Indonesia and Australia.  It has 46 members and has been in place since 2002.

How effective? The figures speak: In the past ten years about 410 boats carrying around 25,000 people have sailed to Australia.  In the week following Canberra’s acceptance of the Houston recommendations nine boats quit Indonesia and delivered their human cargo.

If you’d still like to visit the Great South Land and cuddle a koala don’t be deterred by all this negativity.  Provided you’ve got the cash for a holiday, a visa and intention to return home you’re welcome. Just don’t come by boat.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 Sept 2012)

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SEEKING A BOWEL CANCER INDICATOR

Confronting cancer                                           

 

Some seek fickle fame, others riches.  Chandra Kirana would be happy if she could just find a marker for colorectal (bowel) cancer that will make the diagnosis simple and lead to a cure.

Success would be major news and celebrations universal, not exclusive to the elite of international biomedicists.  These are the top white coats hunting the elusive markers that will show whether a patient is seriously sick or just off color.

It’s painstaking work demanding patience, critical thinking, perseverance and, literally, microscopic attention to detail.  It could also earn the scientist who cracks the code a Nobel Prize and applause for the nation that nurtured such talent.

But Dr Kirana can’t work in Indonesia despite her research showing the Archipelago is rich with plants that may prevent or cure a wide range of diseases, including the Big C.

“There isn’t the equipment, or if there is there’s no budget for maintenance,” she said in New Zealand.  “In some universities there’s not enough money for laboratory rats.

“It would be good if that wasn’t the situation but I’ve had to spend 18 of my 48 years out of my homeland to study and work.”

Bowel cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world behind lung and breast. Screening for over 50s is often recommended, particularly if family members have the disease.

The incidence was once low in Asia.  No longer, as people abandon traditional plain, fresh and wholesome fare for the preserved and processed foods of the West.

The trend has links with toilet terror – irregular visits, pain and a red stain noticed in the bowl before flushing.  Wise ones are in a doctor’s waiting room before the cistern refills.

“This doesn’t mean you have cancer, it could be something else,” said Dr Kirana.  “However at the moment the next stage in treatment is a colonoscopy, which is very harsh and intrusive.”  

Skip this paragraph if you’re squeamish for even the brazen find the procedure embarrassing and discomforting. It involves inserting a camera on a 1.3 meter long flexible tube through the sedated patient’s anus.  Samples from the bowel walls may be taken for analysis.

Now imagine not having to bare your bottom but an arm to provide a simple blood sample.  This can be tested to determine if the problem is piles, benign polyps or cancer. 

When the prognosis is bad, but the disease spotted before spreading, it’s scalpel time.  If in a Wellington operating theater before the anaesthetic wafts you into wonderland you might notice Dr Kirana waiting for the surgeon to excise the diseased gut.

She then slices out the cancer, snap freezes it in liquid nitrogen and heads back to her university laboratory.  Here she examines the cells using laser capture microdissection and mass spectrometry equipment, analysing, thinking in every dimension, trying to spot the aberrations or patterns that might provide the clue.

Her speciality is proteomics, the study of proteins and the way they behave. This research is so leading edge that the word – a mash of ‘protein’ and ‘genome’ - didn’t exist before 1997. The science is moving so fast the technology is trailing researchers’ demands.

Dr Kirana grew up in a village near Probolinggo in the sweetlands of East Java.  Many evenings she walked through cathedrals of green cane taking dinner to her father, a chemist in a sugar mill.

“My Dad worked hard and I felt sorry for him,” she said.  “We weren’t rich. I went to government schools. I knew I had to do my best to please my family, though I was never pressured to study.  But I did well and was always getting top grades.”

She wasn’t alone.  Along with determination her family has splendid intellectual genes.  Her mother studied to be a doctor before costs crippled hopes.  Her siblings have turned to science and teaching.

“At first I just expected to be a wife and never thought of going abroad, even though I’d learned English,” Dr Kirana said.  “Then I wanted to be a doctor and was admitted to the medical faculty at a university in Solo (Central Java).

“However I worried that if my patients died their families would be distressed and maybe I couldn’t cope. Better to work behind the scenes.”

So she joined the Biology Faculty at Yogya’s University of Gadjah Mada (UGM).  After graduating she taught at Malang’s Brawijaya University, got married and discovered the other element necessary for a successful career – a supportive spouse.

When the couples’ two daughters were born Eko gave up his bank job to become a house-husband. 

Unfulfilled with one qualification Dr Kirana went back to UGM for a master’s degree in science.  She won an Australian scholarship, picked up another master’s degree at Adelaide University, then a doctorate.

A fan of jamu, the traditional herbal remedies of Indonesia, she examined turmeric, the yellow spice widely used in cooking, medicine and cosmetics, particularly skin care.  It may have anti-cancer properties.

Other plants under her microscope have been the tastily named zingiber, a genus of gingers with a place in kitchen and sickroom.

After working as a postdoctoral fellow for CSIRO, the prestigious Australian government science agency, in 2007 Dr Kirana returned to Indonesia expecting employment.

Instead she encountered obstructive nose-picking paper shufflers who wouldn’t make eye contact.  “It was a culture shock,” she said.  “I was so angry.”  Within a month she was back on a Boeing heading for a job at NZ’s Wakefield Gastroenterology Research Trust.

In Wellington chairing the Indonesian community group till this year and singing in the Embassy choir are proof her position and stellar qualifications haven’t made her arrogant or aloof.

And her diet?  As a Muslim she doesn’t drink or smoke.  She feeds her family wholemeal bread, home-grown green vegetables and, of course, turmeric extract.  

“I love going to work each day,” she said. “I’m very lucky.  I’m my own boss. My message to young Indonesians is to work hard.  The rewards aren’t always immediate but they do come.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 10 September 2012)

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THE INDONESIAN DIASPORA

 

Stay or Return?                    

Getting jobs overseas can be tough for Indonesian professionals, but the rewards are sweet.  The downsides include your kids straying from their Indonesian roots.  Duncan Graham reports.

When Ridwan quit as a section head with Indonesia’s Supreme Audit Board (BEPEKA) in 2006, friends thought he’d lost his abacus.  Who’d toss in a prestigious government position with a guaranteed pension – it didn’t compute.

His bosses were also bewildered.  They accused the top public servant who’d won a presidential award of betraying his country.  For Ridwan was determined to fulfil a long-held secret dream – to work in the West.

“I still have the red and white (Indonesia’s national colors) in my heart but I also want to be loyal to my profession,” said the assurance manager in New Zealand’s Office of the Auditor General.

“I’m proud of being Indonesian, showing others that we are capable people. I’m helping maintain NZ’s place as the least corrupt country in the world.

“Being away from my country is difficult for my little family (he has a wife and son) and my mother in Jakarta, but not for me.  I’ve worked in the Philippines, South Africa, the US and Australia.”

Ridwan is part of the Indonesian Diaspora, a small but expanding group of Indonesian professionals with transferable skills and no-fear attitudes.  They’re comfortable sipping café latte in sidewalk bars, can flick off English idioms as though they’d been born in London, (UK, Ohio or Ontario) yet want to retain links with their motherland.

It’s not just colleagues’ derision that cripple the ambitions of Indonesians desiring clean air, big skies and space to expand salaries, mind and career.  Indonesia’s bar on dual citizenship also hurts. 

In early July the world’s first Congress on the Indonesian Diaspora was staged in Los Angeles.  In a message to the three-day event President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said his government was “taking concrete steps to develop a strong partnership with the Indonesian Diasporas,” and planning “special visas” for those who have renounced Indonesian citizenship.

Ridwan was on a panel of four speakers at a public forum in Wellington, NZ. The discussion – Stay or Return? The dilemma facing overseas students took up concerns raised at the US Congress organised by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington DC.

The Wellington event was initiated by the NZ-Indonesia Association.

Polytechnic lecturer Iwan Tjhin, a member of the audience, criticised speakers coming from “good financial backgrounds” and overlooking issues like corruption, inequality and discrimination that made people leave Indonesia.

“There’s a huge difference in the value of human life between NZ and Indonesia,” he said.  “Someone gets hit by a bus here and it’s page one news.  You get treated in hospital whoever you are – but not in Indonesia. If you don’t have the money you die.”

Iwan said he’d come from a poor family and had left to seek residency overseas when he was 17. 

His assertion was rejected by Sri Farley.  She’d grown up in a poor family of five children in Medan, North Sumatra.

“I went to a state school and a state university,” she said.  “My parents couldn’t pay. I studied hard and got an honors degree.  I went to Jakarta and became a commercial credit analyst at Bank Negara Indonesia.”

But when she moved to NZ in 1999 with her British husband Daniel she was faced with the rough reality: Like gentlemen and blondes, bosses prefer local graduates.

So she went back to university, struggled, persevered, got pregnant and graduated with distinction with a Masters degree in finance.

“Studying here is different,” she said.  “Staff are more supportive and there’s a collegial relationship with freedom of expression.”

Even then exercising new skills wasn’t easy.  After door knocking as an Indonesian and getting few opened she started using her married name – and found a carpet of welcome mats.

“Ridiculous?  Yes, but that’s the way it is,” she said.  “NZ employers aren’t comfortable using workers from developing countries. They’re OK with people from developed nations, especially if they’re Anglo-Saxon.”

Sri now works as a senior financial analyst with Inland Revenue, the NZ tax department. The hurdles achieving this position were high but she got the nod because her study grades were equally elevated.

“I love travelling so much,” she said. “I want our children to be able to speak Indonesian and appreciate Indonesian culture. If there’s an opportunity to work six months in Indonesia and six months in NZ I’ll go for it too.”

Winning a regular pay cheque was also a problem for Hendry Sutjiadi who got his doctorate in building science from Victoria University of Wellington this year.  Despite having ten years of concrete dust under his fingernails from building roads, bridges and high rises in East Java, NZ company heavyweights were initially unimpressed.

Originally from Surabaya he graduated cum laude with a Master’s degree from Petra University before becoming a project manager for a major construction company. He’s now working for NZ consulting engineers after months of resilience-testing rejections.

“Initially I didn’t want to go overseas, but was pushed by my wife Melissa,” Hendry said.  “We wanted somewhere better to live should we start a family. NZ was a cheaper place to study.”

Grace Pamungkas showed the forum derogatory newspaper cartoons of NZ prime minister John Key and commented that the right to criticise leaders, religion and social values could jolt the sensitivities of older Indonesians.

“My daughter can speak freely if I do anything wrong,” she said.  “This is a culture that respects the young.  I like that but it’s hard to adjust.  My colleagues work and relax differently.”

Grace is uncertain what she’ll do after graduating. Back in Jakarta she could pick up her past profession as an architect or take a university teaching post.  However these jobs probably wouldn’t pay enough to give her daughter an international-quality education.

Grace said her future depends on what Kintaka, 10, wants to do when she is older.  At this stage it looks as though Wellington is winning.

The primary school student has absorbed her new lifestyle so well she’s just won second place in a public speaking competition against local born kids.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 September 2012)

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ASIAN CITIES - TOO BIG, TOO SICK, TOO CROWDED

Anywhere decent left to live?                                       

Among the forecasts on population growth here’s news to stress those smug folk who don’t live in big cities like Jakarta, preferring the better quality of life found in smaller centers: 

Be prepared: Your view of the mountains will disappear behind smog; motorbike engines will shatter your silence.

By 2015 nearly 2.5 billion people globally are expected to live in cities of up to one million compared with 600 million housed in cities of more than five million.

In brief the urban drift continues, but most growth will now occur in smaller cities.

That reverses past trends.  In 1940 Semarang had 200,000, a quarter of Jakarta’s population.  Since Independence the Central Java city has grown five fold, the capital 20 fold.

Once visitors seeking the ‘real’ Indonesia were told to head to the hills where splay-toed men trail buffaloes through mud and leather-skinned women thresh rice in parched paddocks.  But for how much longer?

Soon the majority will be cramped in kampong, not raising corn and cassava for national consumption, but problems for urban planners.  Only 30 per cent of Indonesians will live in rural areas by 2035.  Twenty years ago it was the other way around.

It’s a demographic shift so rapid you only have to return after a couple of years to find once-familiar landmarks turned to rubble. Few Western cities can match Indonesia’s speed of urban change because they’re shackled by prolonged planning, environmental concerns and rigid construction rules.

What’s going on?  Globalization, urbanization or nation-building?  Push or pull? These questions feature in Asian Cities, New Zealand historian Malcolm McKinnon’s study of megalopolis and metropolis in India, China and Indonesia, focusing on the two Javanese centers mentioned above.

Western cities are also expanding, though for different reasons. Growth in places like Germany’s Frankfurt and Canada’s Toronto comes from international migration, while most Asian cities rely on movements of locals seeking better wages.

The two main exceptions are Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, where foreigners are imported to do what the author calls the 3D jobs – dirty, difficult and dangerous. 

Unlike the opening of China to capitalism through political fiat, the economic development of Indonesia has no precise starting point.  The fall of Soekarno in 1965 was a critical point in history; it helped the West breathe more deeply but a flood of capital didn’t follow.

Under Soeharto the state kept control close to the State Palace.  Since his departure Jakarta has remained the magnetic political and entertainment pole of the Republic.  It seems that the much-heralded era of reformation and decentralisation was more sound than substance.

The Big Durian continues to seduce the hopeful and the hard up to seek their fortunes, out-charming Medan, Makassar and other regional centers despite the capital’s black hole reputation.

Compare this with Shanghai, not China’s capital but a huge and powerful attractant through its commercial energy and wealth, with 24 million residents, four million more than Beijing, yet so easy to access. 

If this situation was replicated in Indonesia industrial Surabaya would be the nation’s most populous.  Now too late.  The circling towns have expanded like cells on a slide, creating a borderless mess of terracotta and asphalt.

Semarang had its golden era as a trading port in the late years of Dutch colonialism, the third largest city exporting agricultural produce from the hinterland.  Now it has slipped to ninth place and according to Dr McKinnon is “unequivocally a provincial city.”

In the West the creation of the urban monster has been longer, slower but more consistent, dating back to the industrial revolution, then the centralization of government.

Asia is a fertile area for globalization studies but it’s a discipline where locals tread reluctantly. Says the author: “Scholarship in urban Asia remains, despite over 60 years of independent and independently-minded Asian governments, dominated by the Western academy.”

It would be good if this intellectual energy was leading towards solutions – but that doesn’t seem to be the goal.  Maybe because it’s all too difficult, like the job of town planning in a culture where rupiah, not rules, determine where and how you’ll live.

Asian cities don’t have to be gross.  Hong Kong has been rated as the world’s most liveable by The Economist magazine.

If Soekarno had acted back in the 1950s Jakarta could have been another Semarang and the nation’s capital would be Palangka Raya in Central Kalimantan.  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono keeps the idea alive through occasional CPR, but not the necessary drip feed of dollars. 

If Jakarta can’t even complete a proper public transport system, or an athletes’ village for the Southeast Asian games without corruption, how could it cope in establishing an entirely new city? 

Would rebuilding be a better economic solution, despite the huge complexities and astronomic costs?  Elsewhere the models are mixed.  In 1960 Brazil shifted its capital to Brasilia, a city that now has 3.7 million residents. Rio, the nation’s center since the mid 16^th century now has only 4.5 million.

Less successful have been attempts to move Kuala Lumpur’s 2.6 million by creating Putrajaya. The new city has wide roads and green parks but only 70,000 residents.

It’s a pity that Dr McKinnon hasn’t explored these issues, preferring to concentrate on history and theory – interesting but of limited use.

We know Jakarta is overcrowded and already rushing towards failed city status on the grounds of traffic management and pollution.  What are needed are books on how to fix the problem.

ASIAN CITIES: Globalization, Urbanization and Nation Building

Malcolm McKinnon

NIAS Press 2011

(First published in The Sunday Post, 2 September 2012)

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