Abstract
This chapter analyses one of the classic examples of population distribution policy, transmigration in Indonesia, from the perspective of political demography. The analysis began by locating transmigration within the different political regimes, during colonial time and after independence. The endurance of transmigration policy that is continually being adopted by the different regimes shows the strategic position of transmigration as a useful policy instrument not only for demographic and economic purposes but also more importantly for political reasons. The introduction of borders by the colonial state and continuation after the independence by the post-colonial nation-state emphasise the notion of territorial space, making migration, movement of people within geographical spaces, critically important for the realisation of national unity within the sovereign nation-state border. The chapter has finally concluded that transmigration is indeed an ideological policy which is characterised by its important role to achieve the highest political goal, national integration.
For researchers in universities or other institutions who have not been directly involved in the process of policy making during the Repelita periods, studying the complexity of transmigration has been a challenge. The question they face is whether or not to seek answers through adopting the policy makers narrow views or through extending the existing terms of reference on the basis that the solution is most likely to be found within a wider perspective.
Sayogyo 1985: 42–43
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Notes
- 1.
On 24 November 1987, the Minister for Transmigration announced that the 16,000 houses built for transmigrants had been built in vain because the government had no money to send people to occupy them (Kompas, 25 November 1987).
- 2.
For an assessment of the security dimension of the transmigration policy , see Tirtosudarmo (2001) .
- 3.
In the 1979 survey, among the 116 developing countries, only 6 reported the overall spatial distribution of their population as entirely acceptable. Of the remaining 110 countries, 42 regarded the spatial distribution of their populations as unacceptable to some extent, and 68 found it to be highly unacceptable (United Nations 1981: 40–50).
- 4.
President Suharto in December 1988 was honoured by the Population Council as the first national leader to receive its Population Award. In June 1989 he also received a World Population Award from the United Nations for Indonesia’s achievement in reducing population growth through the family planning program. In contrast, the failure of the transmigration program reached a climax when Martono, Minister for Transmigration, declared that the 16,000 houses that had been built for transmigrants would remain uninhabited (Kompas, 25 November 1987). Unofficial sources reported that the actual number was about 40,000. This large number of uninhabited houses reflects the failure of the Department of Transmigration in recruiting and resettling transmigrants according to its planning schedules.
- 5.
The statement describing Martono as ‘a political man’ was made by Harun Zain during an interview with the author, January 1988.
- 6.
The central government obsession with promoting population resettlement based on food crop agricultural systems as practiced in Java, according to Dove (1985: 32), is essentially a manifestation of the agroecological mythology of the Javanese that has developed in Java and strongly influenced the thinking of many policymakers in the central government.
- 7.
A personal communication from a senior member of staff in the Department of Transmigration, December 1987
- 8.
Such statistical manipulation was recognized by the World Bank , which notes in one of its reports (1988: 134) that:
Although some spontaneous families were settled in existing areas, no program of partially assisted movement or of support for spontaneous migration was developed in the Third Plan. However, the Third Plan target of 500,000 families was eventually achieved by including 169,500 ‘spontaneous’ families in the total moved. Of these, about 30,000 families were moved with partial assistance and the remaining 140,000 moved without assistance but were identified in sending or receiving areas. It is important to emphasize that these families were identified to round out the official target, and the data collected from sending provinces is not a good indicator of the number of people who actually moved.
- 9.
Personal communication to the author, January 1988.
- 10.
According to Anderson (1985: 140), a long-standing scholar of Indonesian politics, this appointment should be read as General Moerdani’s move to take full control of the ‘explosive mass-transmigration program in West Irian’.
- 11.
The Centre for Policy Studies is a nongovernment research institute. Among the senior staff is Professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo , the ‘guru’ of the New Order’s economist-technocrat group.
- 12.
A source close to Professor Sumitro told the author (January 1988) that the request to employ Sumitro as an adviser on transmigration had come from President Suharto.
- 13.
For example, The Ecologist (No. 2/3, 1986) in collaboration with Survival International and Tapol, published a special issue which strongly criticized the transmigration program in Indonesia.
- 14.
Kompas, 26 February 1985.
- 15.
This description was given by Mubyarto at the ‘Conference on Regional Economy in Indonesia’ at ANU, Canberra, February 1987, in which the author was a participant.
- 16.
Tempo, 5 December 1987 (‘Interview with Minister for Transmigration, Martono’), also, Far Eastern Economic Review, 29 October 1987 ‘Indonesia: Resettlement rethink, the government overhauls its transmigration scheme’.
- 17.
Soegiarto, according to Anderson (1985: 142), was one of the ‘stars’ of the AMN (Akademi Militer Nasional or Military Academy) Class of 1960.
- 18.
The increasing number of voluntary migrants to the outer islands in the last 10 years has apparently resulted in the increase of conflict between migrants and local people. In 1995 mass open conflicts broke out between migrants and local people, in East Timor , Irian Jaya and Flores , all in Eastern Indonesia (Tirtosudarmo 1995). The latest incident occurred in Sanggau-Ledo , West Kalimantan , in the first week of January 1997, between the Madurese migrants and the indigenous Dayak people (Kompas, 3 January 1997). Many observers have argued that the economic inequality between migrants and local people is the underlying factor of these ethnic group conflicts (Tirtosudarmo 1997).
- 19.
Some observers have even criticised the new attempt as a setback, as it reflects the revival of the old idea of the colonial state’s economic strategy.
- 20.
The author was one among the so-called experts to be consulted during the preparation of the plan when he strongly argued that such an idea was wishful thinking.
- 21.
The author was asked by the new Minister to be his expert staff member on social and cultural issues.
- 22.
The transmigration program is a perfect example of what is described by Bookman (1997) as demographic engineering which is defined as the state’s attempt to reconfigure the ethno-demographic composition of the population for various strategic purposes.
- 23.
The immunity of the transmigration policy from ‘independent’ evaluation has been admitted, for instance, by a Bappenas official on one occasion in a closed meeting held between Bappenas and the Centre for Policy Implementation Studies (CPIS). CPIS is a ‘semi-government’ consulting agency, attached to the Ministry of Finance, and assisted by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). A major task of the CPIS is to advise the Indonesian government, particularly through the Minister for Finance, on the implementation of various government projects. The advice was sought after an evaluation of a certain program was conducted by CPIS. In the meeting, the official from Bappenas warned the CPIS not to be involved in evaluating two government programs, transmigration and cooperatives. The reason was because, those two programs were considered as ‘too political’, and CPIS would face many problems when it attempted to evaluate those two departments. (This information was obtained from a personal communication with a CPIS staff member in January 1988).
- 24.
Writing in 1990 the author notes:
Viewed from this perspective, the prospect for transmigration policy, at least for the near future, does not seem very bright. Obvious factors, such as only limited areas in the outer islands being suitable for agricultural settlements, will become major constraints for the planners to rebuild a large transmigration program, but, as demonstrated above, several other factors which currently dominate central government thinking will continue to underwrite the broad goals of transmigration policy. In the future, unless a substantial change in the nature of the current military-technocrat coalition occurs in which a more open and democratic decision making process is allowed, transmigration policy is unlikely to move from its current basic assumptions (Tirtosudarmo 1990).
A decade later, in 2000, a significant political change apparently materialized and transmigration policy began to be practically dead following the demise of Suharto’s authoritarian and centralistic government. Yet as time goes by, the subsequent governments from 2000 until today, prove to be reluctant to erase transmigration from history. Transmigration programs have continued to exist in every post-Suharto government.
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Tirtosudarmo, R. (2018). Transmigration as an Ideological Policy. In: The Politics of Migration in Indonesia and Beyond. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-9032-5_1
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