Obama's Personal Ties to Indonesia Improve Diplomatic Relations

U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Indonesia and Australia has been postponed a few days. But it is still generating excitement, particularly in Indonesia. Many Indonesians see the U.S. president as a native son because his mother married an Indonesian and because he lived in Jakarta as young boy. Indonesian officials and supporters hope that Mr. Obama's upcoming state visit will translate the president's personal popularity into improved diplomatic relations.


At the Besuki Public School in Jakarta, eight year old student Chavielda Najma and classmates are rehearsing a dance number they hope to perform for the school's most famous alumni.


She says she likes President Obama very much because he was very good in social sciences.


She, like many Indonesians, feels a personal connection with the U.S. president because he spent part of his childhood years living in Jakarta and attending this school. There is even a statue of him at the entrance to the school. The statue was originally erected at a nearby park but was moved when some people complained that an Indonesian hero should be honored there instead.


Still, political analyst Wimar Witoelar says President Obama is quite popular in Indonesia because most people believe the president understands Indonesian culture and values. "We have a predominately Muslim population and we like to think of ourselves as going on the pluralistic road and he readily accepts and understands that. We don't have to explain that we are Muslims yet not terrorists," he said. "He understands exactly that concept."


Some of Mr. Obama's friends and supporters, like his retired former teacher Effendi, hope this mutual affection will translate into closer ties between the two countries.


He says he would tell the president to not forget Indonesia and make relations with the United States better and better.


With the peaceful re-election last June of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia is seen by many as an emerging power in Southeast Asia, with a developing pluralistic democracy and a stable economy. While it has made great strides to reduce the threat from Islamic extremists, the country suffered a terrorist attack last year that killed seven people.


The two leaders are expected to discuss a number of issues, including the possibility of U.S. payments to Indonesia to stop the burning of it forests, which experts say contributes to global warming.


Indonesian special forces have conducted training exercises to respond to any terrorist threat during the visit. Despite concerns about the Indonesian military's past human rights record, the United States is likely to resume military training of Indonesian special forces.


But Dino Patti Djalal, President Yudhoyono's advisor for international affairs, says the real achievement of the visit will most likely be in re-establishing a diplomatic tone of mutual respect. "We have to be less sensitive to every single thing that is said in Washington. In the same way that Washington needs to be less sensitive about every single thing that is said by politicians in Indonesia. You know it is part of democracy and much of it is just noise really," Djalal said.


While President Obama's homecoming will be short, both sides want to use the visit to reinforce the idea that Indonesians have a friend in the White House. 

Obama's Personal Ties to Indonesia Improve Diplomatic Relations

U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Indonesia and Australia has been postponed a few days. But it is still generating excitement, particularly in Indonesia. Many Indonesians see the U.S. president as a native son because his mother married an Indonesian and because he lived in Jakarta as young boy. Indonesian officials and supporters hope that Mr. Obama's upcoming state visit will translate the president's personal popularity into improved diplomatic relations.

At the Besuki Public School in Jakarta, eight year old student Chavielda Najma and classmates are rehearsing a dance number they hope to perform for the school's most famous alumni.

She says she likes President Obama very much because he was very good in social sciences.

She, like many Indonesians, feels a personal connection with the U.S. president because he spent part of his childhood years living in Jakarta and attending this school. There is even a statue of him at the entrance to the school. The statue was originally erected at a nearby park but was moved when some people complained that an Indonesian hero should be honored there instead.

Still, political analyst Wimar Witoelar says President Obama is quite popular in Indonesia because most people believe the president understands Indonesian culture and values. "We have a predominately Muslim population and we like to think of ourselves as going on the pluralistic road and he readily accepts and understands that. We don't have to explain that we are Muslims yet not terrorists," he said. "He understands exactly that concept."

Some of Mr. Obama's friends and supporters, like his retired former teacher Effendi, hope this mutual affection will translate into closer ties between the two countries.

He says he would tell the president to not forget Indonesia and make relations with the United States better and better.

With the peaceful re-election last June of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia is seen by many as an emerging power in Southeast Asia, with a developing pluralistic democracy and a stable economy. While it has made great strides to reduce the threat from Islamic extremists, the country suffered a terrorist attack last year that killed seven people.

The two leaders are expected to discuss a number of issues, including the possibility of U.S. payments to Indonesia to stop the burning of it forests, which experts say contributes to global warming.

Indonesian special forces have conducted training exercises to respond to any terrorist threat during the visit. Despite concerns about the Indonesian military's past human rights record, the United States is likely to resume military training of Indonesian special forces.

But Dino Patti Djalal, President Yudhoyono's advisor for international affairs, says the real achievement of the visit will most likely be in re-establishing a diplomatic tone of mutual respect. "We have to be less sensitive to every single thing that is said in Washington. In the same way that Washington needs to be less sensitive about every single thing that is said by politicians in Indonesia. You know it is part of democracy and much of it is just noise really," Djalal said.

While President Obama's homecoming will be short, both sides want to use the visit to reinforce the idea that Indonesians have a friend in the White House. 

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Obama Anak Menteng

‘Obama’ Hits Cinemas With A Message of Acceptance
Indonesian celebrities and foreign journalists were among the dozens who gathered on Thursday night for the premiere of the much-hyped “Obama Anak Menteng” (“Obama the Menteng Kid”).

Based on Damien Dematra’s novel of the same name, the movie was directed by John De Rantau and recounts US President Barack Obama’s childhood days in Indonesia.
“The movie is dedicated to the Indonesian people. There are a lot of values that can be learned from it and I hope it can inspire a lot of people to see that every child is a hero for their families,” John told the Jakarta Globe at the movie premiere in the FX mall in South Jakarta.
The film, set in Menteng, Central Jakarta, where Obama lived between 1967 and 1971 with his mother and Indonesian stepfather, focuses on the story of a young African-American child’s struggle for acceptance in a neighborhood where he is very different from local children. Producers say the story is about 60 percent fact and 40 percent fiction.
Obama, played by 12-year-old Hasan Faruq Ali, is depicted as a bright, young school-age boy struggling to win over his peers despite his skin color.
“More movies that portray a good fighting spirit and include local color should be produced here in Indonesia,” John said.
Seto Mulyadi, the chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak), said the movie had an important message about what it took to be brave and become a true leader. “This movie could definitely be an inspiration for children in Indonesia about how amazing the power of dreams are,” he said.
The 100-minute film, produced for about million by local company Multivision Plus Pictures, was originally slated to premiere on July 17, in time for the US president’s planned state visit, but it was pushed back when the visit was canceled.
Damien, who also served as co-director, said he hoped the movie would help build momentum for the Indonesian film market at the international level. The film will be released internationally in September.
The film’s star, Ali, is an American who has lived in Indonesia for a decade and is fluent in both English and Indonesian. The film also stars British actress Clara Lachelle as Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham.
It was filmed over the course of a month in Bandung, which resembles Jakarta in the 1970s, according to Damien and John.

Wimar Witoelar (Perspektif Online)


A Film Response to a Huge Real-Life Story

The story of Barack Obama and his childhood in Menteng. Jakarta could very well be the biggest real-life story ever between the USA and Indonesia. Obama spend less than four years in Indonesia but those were some of the most formative years in a boy's life. I know, I was there, four years at ages 8 to 12 in Europe gave me a sense of belonging to the societies that accepted me. Barry Soetoro as Barack Obama was called then had huge problems of acceptance because he was physically and culturally different from his peers back then, but he adjusted will. The film did not show the sensitivities of his adjustment as well as Obama's book "Dreams from my father." But for those not familiar to the Obama Story, the film offers a decent impression of his trials and tribulations and ultimate victory.
The alienation of his childhood did not stop when Obama left Indonesia for the States. Living with a multi-ethnic, multicultural background, he overcame the challenges and ultimately turned pluralism from a challenge into his major strength.
In that sense Obama is important for Indonesia, who are quickly finding their heritage of pluralism after stimulation from our own President Wahid who also had a remarkable childhood. Find the maturity of an adult within a child, and you will find the optimism of a child within the adult.


Asia Society: A new movie recounts President Obama's childhood in Indonesia

By Wimar Witoelar
The movie Little Obama is based on the book by Damien Dematra. It was directed by John De Rantau and recounts US President Barack Obama's childhood days in Indonesia. The setting is Menteng Atas, Jakarta, where Obama lived between 1967 and 1971, a period when President Sukarno had just been ousted after substantial bloodshed and Suharto was tentatively rebuilding the country before he failed it many years later. 
Barack Obama came to Indonesia at the age of six with his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro. Little Obama (or Obama Anak Menteng, the film's Indonesian title) tells the story of a young African-American child's struggle for acceptance in a society where he is quite different from his peers. Producers say the story is about 60 percent fact and 40 percent fiction.
I read reviews of this movie on American websites just before finalizing this piece. And so, I must start with a disclaimer. This is not a balanced review, but a defense of a highly contextual presentation. Not only contextual in content, but in relation to the different audiences to which it will be exposed. Clearly it is not for reviewers who can't tell the difference between the Indonesian and the Polish flags (both a red and white). Nor will it be liked by those who do not appreciate the international goodwill Barack Obama has created single-handedly in a country that has been disenchanted with America for quite a while, not just the eight years prior to his inauguration.
But before I start the review, let me hark back to the real-life story of Obama's childhood as told in his book Dreams From My Father. As an Indonesian who has watched American-Indonesian relations throughout my life, I regard the book as the most sensitive account of Indonesia during the transition from Sukarno to Suharto in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is far more vivid that any political writer, American or Indonesian, has written about that unique period in our nation's history. It also tells the story of Obama's Indonesian experience better than any movie ever could, because all the drama is in his mind and the country and not in any scenes that make up a gripping movie.
In the current setting, the Obama story is sitting in the middle of two ignorant groups, Indonesian ones who insist on depicting the US as an international oppressor without regard to the positive changes in Washington, and Americans, who are not interested in understanding the effect of Indonesian childhood to a US President elected by a landslide.
The story of Barack Obama's childhood in Menteng, Jakarta, could very well be the biggest real-life story ever shared by the US and Indonesia. Obama spent less than four years in Indonesia, but those were some of the most formative years in a boy's life. I know, I was in Europe between 8 to 12 and Europe gave me a sense of belonging to the societies that accepted me. Barry Soetoro (as Barack Obama was called then where he assumed his stepfather's surname) faced problems of acceptance. He was physically and culturally different from his peers back then, but he adjusted well. 
The film doesn't show the sensitivities of his adjustment as well as Obama's book Dreams From My Father. But for those not familiar with the Obama story, it offers a decent impression of his trials and tribulations and ultimate victory. Many inaccuracies make the movie a rich target for those who concentrate on detail, which could have been avoided had the producers not aimed for a deadline set by President Obama's June visit, which was cancelled at the last minute.
Obama went through a childhood challenged by changes in parents and geographical settings. These factors made him into somewhat of an outsider. The alienation of his childhood did not stop when Obama left Indonesia for the United States. Living with a multi-ethnic, multicultural background, he overcame the challenges and ultimately made his pluralistic experiences into his major strength. In that sense, Obama is important for Indonesia. We are quickly finding that we too have a heritage of pluralism. It was a major message from one of our presidents, the late Abdurrahman Wahid, who also had a remarkable and varied childhood.


Find the maturity of an adult within a child, and you will find the optimism of a child within the adult. This is the nuanced message imbedded in the movie. It cannot be found without a sympathetic bias toward the improvement of American-Indonesian relations. Maybe it will be too unrealistic to expect general outside audiences to pick up on this. So maybe the movie should be kept in Indonesia where people are proud of Obama and of a country that overcame great challenges to find hope in positive action.

Wimar Witoelar is a commentator, writer, and TV host in Indonesia. He was also a spokesman for and an aide to Abdurrahman Wahid, who was Indonesia's president from 1999 to 2001. 

Obama comes home to passionate welcome

The speech was remarkably consistent or unremarkably original, depending on which way you look at it. Obama the president is a two-year battered version of Obama the harbinger of hope.
You have heard the speech before but never to such a passionate audience, 6,500 strong in the University of Indonesia Auditorium. It is both relevant to the promise of international cooperation as well as renewed faith in political leadership. More than the content of the speech, the delivery managed to release the underlying good feelings between the United States and Indonesia that have connected certain parts of the population. This was because Obama was successful to present himself as the “kid from Menteng” who made good.
Obama talked about the time he first came to school in Jakarta and how he gained acceptance immediately. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was the major influence in his young life. She had come from Hawaii with her second husband Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, after Barack Obama’s father from Kenya had died a few years before.
Obama talked about his mother who gave 20 years of her life as an activist to the Indonesia she loved until cancer compelled her to leave for home. The president took the occasion to thank the Indonesian government who had given her a national award to his mother for her devotion to public causes
in Indonesia.
Long before he became president, his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, touched many lives in Indonesia, where she worked as an anthropologist, becoming a pioneer in microfinance and creating services like credit and savings for the poor. So it was that Ms. Dunham, who died in 1995, was honored the evening before with a gold medal, accepted by her son on her behalf in a gesture that the president said left him “deeply moved”.
This kind of sincere expression drove the audience to a passionate state. The hall thundered with applause whenever Obama put his speech in the context of his Jakarta days, describing how Jakarta had changed over 40 years, with the nation becoming “an extraordinary democratic nation with a highly connected and wired people”.
Indonesia adalah bagian dari saya, Obama emphasized to screams of delight from the audience. When he shook hands with the people in the front rows after the speech, he was like a rock star.
And the audience responded with enthusiasm. “We all rely on each other together, like bamboo and the river bank,” Obama said upon receipt of an award for his mother’s work in the country.
“We are all stronger and safer when we see our common humanity in each other.”
So what was the content of the speech in hard terms? Development and democracy. Like Hilary Clinton before him, Obama gave high marks to Indonesia for religious tolerance and democratic reform. In the context of development he saw these qualities are essential human capital. And the president of the United States reaffirmed his commitment to continue the shared values. As he praised Indonesia’s fight against violent extremists, he tied it to his own escalating war in Afghanistan, which antagonizes many Muslim Indonesians.
He brought out the Indonesian national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, translating to unity in diversity, as an example to the world. Comparing it with the United States’ E Pluribus Unum, he cited his country’s pluralism and made it clear that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.
As he goes on beyond emotional expression of common bonds into the areas of his future agenda, the huge challenges loom high. Both the US and Indonesia are not in the best positions to deal with the common challenges that face both nations and governments.
Coming fresh from a resounding defeat in the mid-term elections, Obama is now a president facing a hostile House of Representatives and a weaker majority in the Senate. The US electorate has ignored the historic benefits of the health care bill with some associating it with socialist tendencies. Reforms in the financial sector leave the public unmoved as they give way to impatience over the sluggish wave in employment.
As in the mid-term elections in the first years of the Reagan and Clinton, the winning presidents lose congressional support. But they bounced back and the rest is history. Will Obama repeat this performance? In any case, this is the closest challenge facing Obama before he picks up the threads of America’s global agenda.
Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is in a similar position albeit in a different
scenario. The hugely popular SBY who won his second-term presidency by a landslide now suffers from sunken popularity if you believe the polls. He has weak political support if you believe that the parliament represents the national polity. He has no media support if you believe that the media are not dictated by ambitious businessmen cum politicians.
In any case, his inherent cautious style is now seen by many as indecision. Not an ideal platform to step up reforms. After good speeches in Pittsburgh and Harvard, the words that shook the world no longer have impact as the Indonesian government drifts in a sea of political attacks from people more interested in vested interests than national reform or international initiatives.
Both governments have to do much homework before they can recover the strong support needed for significant reforms. Homework on political consolidation in the US. In Indonesia, the homework is on living up to plaudits of democracy and religious tolerance as democracy is often abused and religion is used by deviants as an excuse for intolerance. We must lanjutkan (continue) because “Yes, we can” meet the challenge.

Tentang Kebun Raya Bogor

Kebun Raya Bogor (KRB) atau Kebun Botani Bogor adalah sebuah kebun penelitian besar yang terletak di Kota Bogor, Propinsi Jawa Barat, Indonesia.
Luas kebun raya ini mencapai 80 hektar dan memiliki 15.000 jenis koleksi pohon dan tumbuhan.
Kebun Raya Bogor banyak dikunjungi oleh pengunjung dari berbagai kalangan, mulai dari anak-anak, remaja, keluarga, bahkan wisatawan dari mancanegara. Kebun Raya Bogor merupakan salah-satu Kebun Botani tertua di Asia dan memiliki keindahan tersendiri.
Kebun Raya Bogor merupakan tempat untuk kegiatan pendidikan dan sekaligus sebagai tempat rekreasi. Di Kebun Raya Bogor terdapat museum hewan (museum zoologi), perpustakaan, Istana Bogor, koleksi taman anggrek, pusat riset dan pengembangan biologi, serta ribuan koleksi spesies tanaman tropis yang dikelompokan sesuai dengan jenisnya, misalnya keluarga palem, bamboo, atau jahe dan juga terdapat pohon-pohon tua yang sudah langka dan umurnya mencapai ratusan tahun.

Sejarah Kebun Raya Bogor
Kebun Raya Bogor, mula-mulanya adalah bagian dari Samida (hutan buatan atau taman buatan) yang telah ada pada pemerintahan Sri Baduga Maharaja (Prabu Siliwangi, 1474-1513) dari Kerajaan Sunda, seperti yang sudah tertulis didalam prasasti Batutulis.
Hutan buatan ini dibuat dengan maksud untuk menjaga kelestarian lingkungan, yang dijadikan sebagai tempat untuk memelihara benih-benih kayu yang langka. Hutan ini kemudian terlantar setelah Kerajaan Sunda ditaklukkan oleh Kesultanan Banten, dan akhirnya pada pertengahan abad ke-18 Gubernur Jenderal van der Capellen membangun rumah peristirahatan di salah-satu sudut hutan buatan ini.
Pada awal tahun 1800-an, Gubernur Jenderal Thomas Stamford Raffles (yang mendiami Istana Bogor saat itu) tertarik untuk menjadikan halaman Istana Bogor menjadi sebuah kebun yang cantik, kemudian dengan dibantu oleh para ahli botani, halaman Istana Bogor dirubah menjadi sebuah taman yang bergaya Inggris klasik. Ini adalah awal mula dari terbentuknya Kebun Raya Bogor seperti sekarang.
W. Kent, yang ikut membangun Kew Garden di London adalah salah-satu yang ikut mendesain taman.
Pada tahun 1814, Olivia Raffles (istri dari Gubernur Jenderal Thomas Stamford Raffles) meninggal dunia, dan dimakamkan di Batavia, kemudian diabadikan dengan didirikannya Monumen Lady Raffles, yang dikenal juga sebagai Ibu Negara Jawa, monumen untuknya didirikan di Kebun Raya Bogor.

Ide awal pendirian Kebun Raya bermula dari seorang ahli biologi yaitu Abner. Abner menulis surat kepada Gubernur Jenderal G.A.G.Ph. van der Capellen, yang isinya menyatakan keinginannya untuk meminta sebidang tanah untuk dijadikan kebun tumbuhan yang berguna, sebagai tempat pendidikan guru, dan menjadi tempat koleksi tumbuhan untuk pengembangan kebun-kebun yang lainnya.
Prof. Caspar Georg Karl Reinwardt adalah seseorang ilmuwan botani dan kimia (berkebangsaan Jerman) yang kemudian pindah ke Belanda, tertarik untuk menyelidiki berbagai macam tanaman yang digunakan untuk pengobatan dan mengumpulkan semua tanaman ini disebuah kebun botani di Kota Bogor, yang saat itu disebut Buitenzorg (bahasa Belanda : tidak perlu khawatir). Reinwardt juga menjadi perintis di bidang pembuatan herbarium dan kemudian dikenal sebagai seorang pendiri Herbarium Bogoriense.
Pada tanggal 18 mei 1817, Kebun Raya Bogor secara resmi didirikan dengan nama s'Lands Plantentuinte Buitenzorg. Kebun Raya Bogor ini didirikan oleh Gubernur Jenderal Godert Alexander Gerard Philip van der Capellen. Pelaksanaan pembangunan kebun ini dipimpin oleh Prof. Caspar Georg Karl Reinwardt dengan dibantu oleh James Hooper dan W. Kent (dari Kebun Botani Kew yang terkenal di Richmond, Inggris). Setelah itu Bogor kemudian menjadi pusat pengembangan pertanian dan hortikultura di Indonesia. Pada masa itu diperkirakan ada sekitar 900 tanaman hidup ditanam di kebun ini. Adapun lahan pertama yang dijadikan sebagai kebun botani adalah tanah disekitar Istana Bogor dan bekas Samida.
Pada tahun 1822, Reinwardt pulang ke Belanda dan posisinya diganti oleh Dr. Carl Ludwig Blume. Dr. Carl Ludwig Blume kemudian melakukan inventarisasi tanaman koleksi yang tumbuh di kebun dan juga menyusun katalog kebun yang pertama, berhasil dicatat sebanyak 912 jenis (spesies) tanaman.
Johannes Elias Teysmann (1831), seorang ahli kebun istana Gubernur Jenderal Johannes van den Bosch, dengan dibantu oleh Justus Karl Haßkarl, ia melakukan pengaturan penanaman tanaman koleksi dengan mengelompokkan tanaman menurut suku (familia).
Johannes Elias Teysmann kemudian digantikan oleh Dr. Rudolph Herman Christiaan Carel Scheffer pada tahun 1867 menjadi direktur, dan kemudian dilanjutkan oleh Prof. Dr. Melchior Treub.
Pendirian Kebun Raya Bogor adalah awal perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan di Indonesia, dari sini lahir beberapa institusi ilmu pengetahuan lain, seperti Bibliotheca Bogoriensis (1842), Herbarium Bogoriense (1844), Kebun Raya Cibodas (1860), Laboratorium Treub (1884), dan Museum dan Laboratorium Zoologi (1894).
Pada tanggal 30 Mei 1868, Kebun Raya Bogor secara resmi terpisah pengurusannya dengan halaman Istana Bogor.
Pada awalnya kebun ini hanya digunakan sebagai kebun percobaan untuk tanaman perkebunan yang akan diperkenalkan ke Hindia-Belanda (kini Indonesia). Namun pada perkembangan selanjutnya digunakan juga sebagai wadah penelitian ilmuwan pada jaman itu (1880 - 1905).
Kebun Raya Bogor selalu mengalami perkembangan yang berarti, Prof. Ir. Koestono Setijowirjo (1949) adalah merupakan orang Indonesia pertama yang menjabat suatu pimpinan lembaga penelitian yang bertaraf internasional.
Kebun Raya Bogor didalam perjalanan sejarahnya mempunyai berbagai nama dan julukan, seperti : s'Lands Plantentuin, Syokubutzuer (zaman Pendudukan Jepang), Botanical Garden of Buitenzorg, Botanical Garden of Indonesia, Kebun Gede, Kebun Jodoh, Kebun tete.

Daya Tarik Kebun Raya Bogor :
Bunga Bangkai (Amorphophalus Titanum)
Bunga ini pada saat akan mendekati mekar, akan mengeluarkan bau bangkai yang menyengat. Tinggi bunga ini dapat mencapai setinggi 4 meter dengan diameter sekitar 1,5 meter dan merupakan bunga majemuk terbesar didunia tumbuhan.

Pohon Leci (Litchi Chinenis)
Pohon tertua yang ada di Kebun Raya Bogor adalah Pohon Leci dari China. Pohon ini ditanam pada tahun 1823, letaknya didekat danau Kebun Raya Bogor.
Tak jauh dari danau terdapat Patung Putri Duyung dan Patung Tangan Tuhan, yang merupakan duplikat dari patung yang ada di Kopenhagen dan Stokholm.

Bunga Fragnant Frangipani
Bunga Fragnant Frangipani, akarnya selalu keluar dari tanah.

Bunga Lily Jawa
Kebun Raya Bogor mempunyai koleksi Bunga Lily Jawa yang sudah langka.

Pohon Raja
Pohon ini asalnya dari Kalimantan. Disebut Pohon Raja karena Raja di Kalimantan suka mengoleksi pohon ini, yang gunanya dapat untuk menarik lebah dan diambil madunya.

Kelapa Sawit
Kebun Raya Bogor mempunyai koleksi pohon kelapa sawit tertua di Asia Tenggara yang masih hidup hingga sekarang.

Rumah Kelelawar
Terdapat pohon besar yang sudah tua, yang menjadi rumah tempat kelelawar bergelantungan.

Perlengkapan Yang Perlu Dibawa
Gunakan baju lengan panjang untuk keliling Kebun Raya Bogor, gunanya untuk melindungi kulit dari sengatan sinar matahari serta untuk melindungi diri dari gigitan nyamuk. Bawalah topi, air minum, makanan kecil.

Cara Mencapai Kebun Raya Bogor
Kebun Raya Bogor terletak ditengah Kota Bogor yang ramai, sehingga tidak sulit untuk menemukannya.
Dari Jakarta (± 63 km menuju Kebun Raya Bogor) :
-Dengan bis menuju Terminal Baranangsiang-Bogor, dilanjutkan dengan naik Angkot menuju Kebun Raya Bogor dan turun di pintu Kebun Raya Bogor dekat IPB.
-Dengan kereta ke Stasiun Bogor, dilanjutkan dengan naik Angkot jurusan Merdeka-Sukasari menuju Kebun Raya Bogor dan turun dipintu 1 dekat Pasar Bogor.

Waktu Kunjungan Ke Kebun Raya Bogor
Mulai buka dari jam 8 pagi sampai jam 5 sore.
Pintu gerbang utama berada disebelah selatan, pintu-pintu yang lainnya hanya dibuka pada hari minggu dan hari libur.
Pada hari minggu, hari libur dan liburan panjang, Kebun Raya Bogor padat pengunjung.

Informasi :
Pada tanggal 1 Juni 2006 (± pukul 20.00 - 20.30 WIB), terjadi badai dan angin kencang, akibatnya sebanyak 124 pohon di Kebun Raya Bogor tumbang, diantaranya banyak pohon yang telah berumur diatas 100 tahun.

A Few Reflections Richard Critchfield

Richard Critchfield

1. Nobel Prize for Dr. Borlaug
2. Djakarta: The First "Closed City"

October 30, 1970
A few days ago I received a cable from the Washington Star asking me to write a story on this year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, an associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation and the distinguished plant geneticist who did much of the pioneering research that made Asia’s present "green revolution" of new seeds and fertilizer possible. "What’s it all about?" the cable ended.

My instinctive, one-word reply to the question was "culture." That what the green revolution was really all about was not only agricultural transformation but also very rapid cultural evolution, perhaps even upheaval, in hundreds of thousands of villages all over the world. And villages which until now had been pretty much left behind by history.

The "hundreds of thousands" gave me a little pause, since my own experience had been almost entirely limited to two villages where I have been living much of the past year: Ghungrali-Rajputan, a prosperous, wheat-producing community on northern India’s Punjab plain and Pilangsari, a relatively poor rice-growing village on the banks of the Tjimanoek River in western Java.

The two villages and the reaction of their inhabitants toward the green revolution were strikingly different. On the one hand, the robust, down-to-earth Punjabis in their traditional pursuit of the good life, were eager to modernize and mechanize and enjoy the material benefits of Western technology. And all but the elderly seemed fully prepared to pay the cultural price.

On the other hand, the mystical, artistic, highly cultured Javanese peasantry were taking to the new seeds with conspicuous reluctance, and one felt, only out of economic necessity; among several villagers the new technology was viewed, and rightly, as a direct threat to the traditional Javanese belief and behavior system with its distinctive style of life and human relationships.

It was not surprising that in Punjab the farmers themselves were taking the lead in innovation and chafing at the Indian government’s slowness to adopt to change. While in Java it was the Indonesian government which was using much of the pressure and means of persuasion at its command to get the villagers to grow the new rice.

But in both villages an almost identical economic process was taking place: there was a distinct shift away from traditional systems in which the poor landless people of the village received a fixed part of the crop in return for the labor. Instead more and more farmer-landowners were opting for simple cash payments.

This movement toward a money economy is built into the green revolution. The new seeds, whether a farmer is growing wheat, rice or maize, require much heavier inputs of water, chemical fertilizer and, in the case of rice, insecticides. Water may be provided by expanded government irrigation systems, or a privately-owned tube well, but both require a greater investment by the farmer than in the past. And the big-cash outlay, needed each sowing season, is for fertilizer. This means having a sufficient marketable surplus each harvest to raise enough cash for the next crop. Automatically anyone growing the new varieties has to think in terms of money, economy of operations (especially labor costs) and returns. And when an economic system is monetarized, it is not long before the value system begins to be monetarized too.

In a traditional village, where the social structure is based on mutual interdependence, whether between the Jat owner-farmer caste and their untouchable laborers in the Punjab, or between the modest landowners and their poorer kinsmen in Java, this tends to drastically displace human values. In Ghungrali, for instance, where the poorer two-thirds of the villagers were landless untouchables, a sense of community, harmony and security had always been preserved by the caste structure, with its carefully evolved system of mutual rights, obligations and responsibilities. In return for their labor, the untouchables were guaranteed a certain amount of the wheat crop each year and the right to freely graze their cattle. The cultural crisis, described in detail in my earlier "Sketches of the Green Revolution," came when the Jats felt compelled by the economics of growing the new wheat to put their laborers on a cash-payment basis. The untouchables refused to accept this, a mutual boycott followed (it has since ended) and the Jats, for the first time in a thousand years, refused to let the untouchables graze cattle on their land.

In Pilangsari, a similar crisis is coming. This will be described in detail in a report next month on agricultural change and urbanization in west Java and Djakarta entitled "Hello, Mister, Where Are You Going?" But hastily sketched, much of the rice harvest in Pilangsari is now carried out under what is called the tjeblokan system, whereby a group of poor relatives or fellow villagers both plant and harvest the rice crop of an often modest landowner in return for one-sixth of the crop. Moreover, under this system, the rice is cut with a tiny razor-like instrument, the ani-ani, which is held in the palm of the hand and is slow and uneconomical. (After the back-breaking wheat harvest in the Punjab, I found it rather like gathering flowers for a bouquet). Not surprisingly, the more innovation-minded peasants in the village who are also growing the new rice, are talking of switching to harvesting with a sickle and putting their workers on a strict cash basis. Certainly, it would be more efficient and economical. It would also undermine a village social welfare system established over centuries.

Government extension workers, who visited Pilangsari when I was there, openly spoke out against the tjeblokan system in favor of cash payments. They also hoped to restrict, through non-issuance of licenses, the number of village performances of the famous Javanese wajang shadow play. Here, too, the money could be more economically used for fertilizer and insecticides. But the wajang play is more than popular village entertainment; it is the very heart of classical Javanese culture and the fount of much of its religion, philosophy and moral code.

Here then were two villages, distinctly different in race, culture and world view, yet alike in that each, after being in a solid equilibrium for centuries, was now undergoing an agricultural revolution that threatened to destroy the delicate balances, by which the village had always held together. In both, these balances rested on similar customs-the heavy weight of considerations of kinship, the responsibility of the family heads to provide food, shelter and clothing for all who labored in their fields, the tacit right of the landless to graze cattle and gather wood for fire undisturbed, the inherent obligations of mutual assistance, the practice of loans with little interest and hospitality without cost, the stability of the family.

Now all this was changing. One might say that the West had finally and twice reached into these villages during this century. First, with the modern medicine and DDT that, in the past 50 years produced a cataclysmic fall in the death rate and created a population explosion (the number of people in both villages had almost doubled in the past generation). And, second with the agricultural revolution, which is proving much more decisive culturally.

One looks for a reason why this is so. Somehow the fact of more people, even twice as many people in the villages, did not do much to alter its basic culture. Everyone was poorer than before but the old traditions survived. Instead the cultural transformation follows the transformation of agriculture.

It is, of course, the same thing that happened in Europe in the 19th century when the drive for an agricultural surplus to feed a fast-growing population led to the modernization of agriculture. But this resulted in some 35 million European migrants flooding into the United States. Even the relatively small number of American Negroes displaced by the agricultural mechanization of the South has left the United States with its greatest unsolved domestic problem.

But if Ghungrali and Pilangsari are genuinely representative, as I am convinced they are, then one can deduce that the same thing must be happening in all of the hundreds of thousands of villages where the new strains of wheat, rice and maize have been introduced. To name just some of the countries where the new seeds have already had some impact: India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, South Vietnam, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Japan, Kenya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay (to say nothing of Russia and China where the new wheat varieties are now being tried).

The question is: In all these villages where the new agricultural technology is being practiced, does the economic imperative operate in the same way as in Ghungrali and Pilangsari so as to snap old ties and traditions, forcing peasant-farmers to face the enormous compulsion of working out new relationships, new meanings to their lives? It is my contention that the answer is "yes" and that the ensuing cultural crisis, the vast mass exodus from the land it will produce and the shock of those who have been uprooted will face the world with a problem of such magnitude as to overshadow all others by the end of this decade.

This is not to decry the green revolution. The point must be made that the growth of population following the spread of modern medicine made the adoption of modern agricultural technology an absolute necessity for most of the poor nations. The first village of my study, Grand Gaube on the southern Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, revealed the desperation, sense of apocalypse and sheer tragedy of the situation where there is overpopulation with no possibility of an agricultural revolution. The result is what comes very close to being a true Malthusian breakdown.

As Thomas Malthus wrote in his "First Essay on Population" in 1798, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio…The race of plants, and the race of animals, shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects, are waste of seed, sickness and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice."

In Grand Gaube village, an extremely high rate of alcoholism, a mounting revolutionary storm and the turning of the elderly toward apocalyptic prophecy all seemed to grimly fulfill Malthus’ prediction. No, the green revolution may be opening up a convulsive new chapter for mankind but it was historically inevitable.

To find another historical parallel for what seems to be happening in countless villages all over the world one can go back much farther than 19th century Europe to the very beginnings of agriculture in the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile and Indus river valleys. The first Mesopotamian or Egyptian to dig an irrigation ditch, put the first animal into harness or use a traction plow was presumably just trying to better feed his family. But these technical innovations created new styles of life, new systems of human relationships, led to the first breakthroughs to civilized society, the eventual rise of the West and, in modern times, to the imposition of European culture and, technology on the great cities of the whole world, including those of Asia.

Historically left almost untouched these five thousand years until the green revolution began to take hold just during the last three or four years, have been most of the villages of the world, where two-thirds of the human race now lives.

In result, some 80 per cent of the populations of the poor nations are still engaged in primitive agriculture, which is the main reason why these countries are poor. In the rich, advanced countries of the West, it is something less, than 10 per cent.

It has always been clear that at some point in history this gap would begin to close. And that when it did the impact, not only agriculturally and economically but culturally and in terms of the vast migration of peoples, would be momentous.

It was with such thoughts in mind I cabled back my story to the Star:

"The immediate significance of this year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug concerns food production. That more than anyone else the little known plant breeder from Iowa can be credited with rescuing millions of the world’s people from what was not long ago a widely predicted Malthusian crisis of global proportions by 1975. [Note: One such prediction was prepared for President Lyndon B. Johnson by Walt W. Rostow and the State Department Policy Planning Council in 1964; the most exhaustive study ever made on world food and population, prepared in late 1967 by Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee, was the result. So fast have things moved since then most experts feel today that the report should be drastically revised in its plans and strategy to encourage trade in food between the poor countries and avoid a glut of wheat and rice caused by too rapid an expansion of production in developed exporting nations, such as Canada, Australia, Argentina and the United States .]

But a second dimension to Dr. Borlaug’s achievement has been as an agent of what promises to be profound, worldwide and possibly convulsive cultural change as modern western technology reaches for the first time into hundreds of thousands of remote, traditional Afro-Asian villages. In the broad sweep of history, the cultural impact his new seeds are having seems likely to overshadow his scientific contribution to agriculture alone.

"Presently an associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation in charge of wheat research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, Borlaug has played the pioneering role the past twenty-six years in developing the new dwarfed, stiff-stemmed strains of wheat, rice and maize which in the past five years have begun to revolutionize agriculture in the poor two-thirds of the world…The history of this "green revolution" is now becoming familiar, the years of patient, pioneer research by Borlaug, Dr. J. George Harrar, the present president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and other plant breeders in the hills above Mexico City, using wheat brought, according to legend, from Spain by Cortez and crossbreeding it with dwarf strains from Japan, eventually producing a shorter, stockier plant which matured rapidly, was non-seasonal and did not lodge under its own weight when heavily fertilized. The expansion of research by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and, the breakthroughs in cross-pollenization of rice in the Philippines and hybrids of other food grains which quickly followed. And, former President Johnson’s tough decision, jointly based on predictions of global famine and the emergence of the new seeds, of tying future American food aid to steps by recipient countries to grow more food.

"Borlaug himself has credited the rapid success of the green revolution in India, Pakistan and Turkey to their imports of large quantities of Mexican seeds (18,000 to 40,000 tons), government polices promoting fertilizer sales and incentive prices, and the establishment of aggressive indigenous research programs. He has described the greatest achievement of the green revolution as demonstrating "that food production need not be a problem for the next three decades;" time he feels must be used to bring population growth in check.

"But recognition of Borlaug’s work and the green revolution itself comes at a time when it also is becoming increasingly evident that in every area where there has been success-where the new seeds and heavy inputs of water, chemical fertilizer and insecticides they require have succeeded in doubling or tripling harvests-a deep cultural crisis has followed…"

The story cited some examples from the Punjab and Java and then went on to make what I hoped was my main point: "It has always been obvious that if you change a village’s agricultural methods you are also going to change its cultural values. What perhaps has not been so obvious was the vast scale and scope of the Cultural Revolution which has been set off by the new seeds…"

A couple of parenthetical remarks: Dr. Borlaug is quoted as saying the green revolution now gives the world thirty years more time in which to reduce population growth rates to manageable levels, what is usually described as "a breathing space of two or three decades" by development economists.

Here it should be noted that in India many agricultural technicians, both American and Indian, challenge this and maintain India will be lucky to get two or three years before the population growth rate of 2.5 per cent and the real food demand growth rate of 3.5 per cent exceed the increases in agricultural out-put.

I myself would like to challenge the whole notion of any expectation of success in population control. There has been so much talk in the West about how the poor countries must hold their populations in check that one tends to have the vague feeling that some progress must be being made somewhere.

In both the villages where I lived, Ghungrali and Pilangsari, the incentives, both human and economic, among the landless laborers to have large families appeared to outweigh the disincentives. Unlike the world’s educated middle classes, or prosperous farmer-landowners, who have taken to family planning out of a desire to educate their children or perpetuate their farm into the future as a viable economic unit, the poor majority of the peasants appeared to have a real interest in having as many children, or as many potential wage earners in their household, as possible. With few exceptions the poorest peasants were not worried about educating children who traditionally start work as farm laborers and bread winners at the ages of 13 or 14. In both villages there was a heavy cultural emphasis on fertility and procreation and government propaganda on behalf of family planning seemed no match for the pressures on a young bride to validate her own position by having many sons, and as soon as possible. One of the Indian government’s birth control slogans is "The small family is a happy family." In reality, in the villages, the reverse seemed true; it was the large, teeming households, with plenty of daily wage earners and the security of numbers that was the happier.

In Ghungrali, there was considerable impact from government programs promoting knowledge of birth control. A huge billboard praising the two to three-child family greeted you as you entered the village. Everyone seemed to have an awareness of the pill and intrauterine devices and the government’s catchy slogan of "Do ya teen, bas!" ("Two or three, finish!") was as familiar as a Winston ad would be in America. In contrast, in Pilangsari, there was almost no awareness of the government’s family planning program or of either the pill or I.U.D.

Yet in practice, birth control seemed much the same in both Ghungrali and Pilangsari. The more prosperous, better-educated landowners had smaller families based on motives of enlightened self-interest and the poorer, landless laborers had big families, also in terms of their own self-interest.

In the city of Djakarta, family planning has been practiced by 15,000 women, presumably middleclass, educated, and civic-minded ladies. But Djakarta is a city of almost five million people.

It is my own impression after a year in the villages that what holds true for Djakarta holds true for the world, and that any expectation of limiting global population through government-sponsored family planning efforts for the rest of this century is totally unrealistic.

Why should a Punjabi laborer or Javanese peasant limit the number of children he has when he does not feel it is in his individual interest to do so?

One day when I was working out in the rice paddy with Husen, a Javanese farmer who has been my principal subject of study in Pilangsari, and I asked him, "Don’t you worry about the world’s population doubling by the end of the century? Think what this village would be like with twice as many people."

Husen

"I can’t think about that. Wah, I’d go crazy," answered Husen. So maybe I’d like to go to the moon too. I won’t even ride in a motor car before I die." (The father of four, three of which died in childbirth or infancy, Husen hopes to keep on having children to insure the survival of at least three more).
Thus it seems inevitable there will be at least another one billion people in the poor countries alone by 1985 and that the number of those who will depend upon agriculture for their livelihoods will rise about 50 per cent. If the present green revolution follows the pattern set by the agricultural revolution in Europe in the 19th century, the greatest exodus from the land and migration to the cities in history is about to commence.

British economist Barbara Ward has said the prospect is of "a tidal wave, a Hurricane Camille of country people that threatens to overwhelm the already crowded, bursting cities. It is not so much immigration as inundation."

For the past two years the world Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome has taken the position that the food problem of the 1960’s has become the unemployment problem of the 1970’s. The Netherlands Addeke H. Boerma, the FAO’s director general, told the second meeting of the World Food Congress in The Hague last July that unless the green revolution was carefully managed the result might be "a conflagration of violence that would sweep through millions of lives."

In September, World Bank Director Robert S. McNamara reported to his board of governors that "the poorest quarter of the population in developing lands risks being left almost entirely behind in the vast transformation of the modern technological society." McNamara said "the ’marginal’ men, the wretched strugglers for survival on the fringes of farm and city, may already number more than half a billion. By 1980 they will surpass a billion, by 1990 two billion. Can we imagine any human order surviving with so gross a mass of misery piling, up at its base?"

It is hard to see how the green revolution could be carefully managed, as Dr. Boerma urges. Governments are up against the same problem as they encounter in trying to check population growth: the self interest of an individual peasant, usually a man with extremely limited horizons whose confident belief in his position in the world and his relationship with all humanity has been fixed over centuries by very old, stable, traditional village cultures.

But this has its positive aspect. When McNamara speaks of "wretched strugglers for survival," he seems to hit a false note. "Strugglers" for survival?" Yes. "Wretched?" I would say no if one is taking in all of the half-billion "marginal" men he says there are already. I am willing to venture that most of these still strongly identify with a village and that village’s culture even if they actually have lived for years in a great Asian city as a coolie, a betjak driver or in other menial work. As long as they retain this sense of cultural identity, this sense of having a place in a universe with fixed cultural values, no matter how poor they are, I do not think they can accurately be called wretched.

And here to me is the real meaning of the green revolution: That for the past few decades the old structure of the old village society in vast stretches of Asia, Africa and Latin America has begun to crumble. The introduction of modern medicine and the population explosion that followed gave village culture a rude shock and weakened the aged foundations. The new seeds and the transformation of agriculture and the village economy they require could be the climactic blow.

All over the poor two-thirds of the world there may be a mighty cultural and economic collapse leaving without homes millions of helpless, bewildered people. There would not only be such a vast army of emigrants as the world as never seen but an army of peasants alienated from their culture. That we might be faced not only with a massive flood of people to the cities but also a wholly unprecedented phenomenon of global cultural alienation is the frightening part.

Ali Sadikin

Djakarta-The First "Closed City"Three months ago Lieutenant General Ali Sadikin, the governor of Djakarta, declared that because of the flood of incoming islanders and country people had reached "proportions endangering the safety and order of life in the capital," Djakarta would henceforward be "a closed city to new jobless settlers."

It was the most drastic action yet taken by a great Asian city to try and stem the flow of urbanization.

General Sadikin privately admits that his action, at least for now, has been largely for psychological impact, to try and discourage rather than physically prevent people from coming into Djakarta. ("We cannot, after all, arrest somebody for entering the nation’s capital," he says. "We are trying to reduce the flow, we know we can’t stop it.")

But in Bombay there has been a heated debate over how to create a workable system to actually keep all new migrants out. This has raised legal questions since the Indian Constitution provides for freedom of movement. Other Indian cities are studying Moscow’s apparently successful method of holding its population growth in check through a work certificate system. But this requires an extensive police apparatus to say nothing of the curtailment of civil liberties it implies.

All of which is evidence of the mounting desperation shared by urban planners all over Asia, Africa and Latin America as they are faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of providing water, sanitation, housing, education, transportation, law and order and, above all, jobs, to exploding urban populations.

Even if migration into the cities in the developing countries came to a complete halt, natural population increases at present rates of up to 3 per cent (Djakarta’s is 2.5 per cent) would double the number of urban dwellers by the end of the century. But migration from the countryside is not halting, it is accelerating by the rate of at least 5 per cent a year as population pressures build up in the villages and at least some landless laborers are displaced by the green revolution. So the planners’ desperation seems understandable.

On any present calculation, there will be more than 18 cities in Latin America and more than a dozen in India and Pakistan over the million mark by the end of this decade. Buenos Aires may have 9 million, Cairo 6 million, Djakarta 6 or 7 million. Calcutta, with a density of population twice that of Chicago, with 70 per cent of its families living in single rooms and countless, thousands sleeping at night on its pavements, may reach 15 million.

In many of these cities, it is only a matter of time before an actual majority of the inhabitants will be new immigrants straight from the villages, a large proportion of them without jobs and a very high proportion of them without housing, sanitation or a pure water supply.

Indeed, this appears to be already true of Djakarta. The city government admits as many as 80 per cent of its citizens may live outside its basic public services. Only 15 per cent of Djakarta’s families pay property taxes. Less than 12.5 per cent of the homes are electrified and only 15 per cent are connected to the city’s water supply. (The current capacity of Djakarta’s water purification system is 3,300 liters per second as against an estimated real demand of 8,000 liters per second. The gap is presently filled with well water, which on the northern, seaward wide of the city is brackish. The government hopes to reach an 8,000-liter capacity by 1974, when the population will have grown another half a million).

But such statistics are only warning signals of the true nature of today’s urban crisis in cities like Djakarta. In contrast to the 19th century experience of Europe, where the cities developed at the same time as the agricultural revolution and growth of the industrial system, cities like Djakarta lack a solid base of manufacturing jobs.

In a city which is growing at the rate of 5.6 per cent a year, the number of totally unemployed is estimated at 58,000. Of some 65 industrial development projects approved by the Indonesian government by last December, 34 involving an investment of around 4 billion rupiahs (375 rupiah equals $1) are in Djakarta itself-General Sadikin estimates these will employ about 40,000 men.

Of some 134 new projects involving $169 million in foreign investment, Sadikin estimates that, based on a formula that a million U.S. dollars of foreign investment provides jobs for 200 men, that employment for 30,000 men should be opened from this source.

This obviously represents a very high rate of capitalization per worker. In the 19th century the industrial system began with simple technologies demanding few skills and a low rate of capitalization per worker-the equivalent of six months average wages would be typical of a hundred years ago. Compare what would have been about $200 at best with Sadikin’s probably optimistic estimate of $5,000 of investment per job created in Djakarta today. A hundred years of growing technological sophistication means at least a sixty-fold increase in the capital needed and a much more intensive level of skill and trained supervision.

The industries flowing into Indonesia (45 per cent of it to Djakarta city) from foreign investment tend to be highly oriented toward capital-intensive technology-of 22 recently approved projects almost all were for electronics, machinery, communications, metal production, food processing and medicine. This is at a time when capital is extremely scarce in Indonesia and labor pitifully plentiful. Even in the unlikely event of a phenomenal expansion of industry in the next ten years, the number of unemployed in Djakarta would probably be as high as ever.

Another problem is that modern industry demands a certain size of market if necessary economies of scale are to be achieved. But the relatively modest needs of Djakarta’s small middle class sets a limit on the number of industrial jobs that can be built up by substituting local manufactures for former imports. (Going by the number of people who have pure water and electricity one can guess that the middle class of Djakarta would be around 600,000). Nor do export markets offer an easy alternative since new Indonesian industries would be up against the efficient, and long-established American, European and Japanese competitive giants.

The vast majority of the immigrants pouring into Djakarta are Javanese peasants without any industrial or urban skills (although they are among the world’s best rice farmers). Only 650 miles long and 75 miles wide, Java’s 74 million population is one of the densest in the world (the rest of Indonesia’s population, spread out over the 3,000 far-flung islands of the Indonesian archipelago, numbers only 31 million).

Most of the uprooted Javanese villagers turn to the so-called tertiary economic activities-betja pedaling, street vending, petty hawking, shining shoes, selling rice-the kind of employment which keeps a man from absolute starvation but contributes all but nothing either to the economy’s development or to his own acquisition of skills and confidence. Enough also turn to prostitution and pimping to pose what the Djakarta government terms "a serious problem." Official statistics put the current number of prostitutes at 3,082 and pimps at 590. I would have put the number far higher.

But the real symbol of the new immigrant from the countryside in Djakarta is the betjak driver-the lean, hard-muscled peasant who earns a precarious existence pedaling one of the brightly-painted tricycles that are Djakarta’s main form of transportation. There are presently 126,000 registered betjaks in the city and General Sadikin estimates that, since most are driven on a two-man shift, there may be as many as 240,000 betjak men in all, numbering, with their families, perhaps as many as 700,000 or 800,000 people. Sadikin told me he would like to get rid of all the betjaks from Djakarta by 1980 but that, considering the need to find alternative employment for so many people, it posed a "delicate social problem."

Sadikin has taken steps in recent months to bring the betjak men under some government control. Betjaks of different colors-yellow, blue, gray, green, red-are limited to carrying passengers in certain areas of the city and have been assigned definite parking areas. Whether the betjak drivers will ignore such attempts at regulation as serenely as they ignore traffic rules if no policemen is in sight, remains to be seen.

In recent days, the governor has also cracked down on sidewalk street vendors, who probably have outnumbered the betjak drivers. Forbidding them to set up their stalls on the sidewalks of the main streets and establishing a new licensing system, Sadikin warned that "without serious law enforcement, we can predict that streets in town within two or three years will be filled with rubbish and jammed by vendors." He has also started a campaign against Djakarta’s legions of beggars and what he described as between 60,000 and 90,000 vagrants. These are immigrants, often from Sumatra or another islands who do nothing at all, camp in parks and railway stations and are blamed for much of the city’s petty crime. Yet like most of Djakarta’s people, these seem a cheerful lot. The most conspicuous exception to the generally buoyant spirits of the Djakartans are ragged men one sees in the streets picking up cigarette butts so that the tobacco can be reused. They tend to have a carious aloof air and seldom look about them; possibly they are too ashamed.

Operating on a limited budget, General Sadikin sometimes has had to use considerable ingenuity to keep the city running. Five years ago Djakarta had only 500 buses in running condition; commuters had to wait three or four hours and then hang from the doorway if they wanted to get anywhere. Today Djakarta seems to have one of the fastest and smoothest bus systems anywhere. (And the cheapest; you can go all over the city for about two cents. For the first time ever, this reporter became a confirmed bus rider in Djakarta).

Sadikin credits the spirit of entrepreneurship for this success. He has established a monopoly system on all the routes, hiring private contractors with a minimum of 50 buses. Unfortunately, the same thing won’t work for low-cost housing, one of Djakarta’s most serious needs. Sadikin is aware that the building trades are the largest potential users and trainers of unskilled labor (all those betjak men) and that a large building program would stimulate industry.

The problem is that even a modest middle-class house would cost 2.9 million rupiahs per unit, which most Djakartans couldn’t afford to pay back in twenty years. Without a commercial return on investment, low-cost housing is by-passed by investors in favor of building luxury tourist hotels, cinema houses or restaurants. These are, indeed, going up all over-the city.

Sadikin agrees that a big low-cost housing program in Djakarta, similar to those in Singapore, or Kuala Lumpur, might be the speediest and most effective way of creating jobs. He said what he would really like is to be able to negotiate directly a 50-year, 2 per cent housing loan from the World Bank or other international lending agency.

Which suggests some sort of international system of guarantees to local mortgage institutions possibly through a new international mortgage bank might be highly desirable in the future.

As Sadikin explained his problem, "Somebody like Lee Kuan Yew has all the power in his hands. I have to go through the central government. And in the current five year plan the Number 1 priority is agriculture."

He said that until some way is found whereby poor people can pay back the enormous amount of capital involved in low-cost housing or some new form of foreign assistance, is provided, his city government is only capable of restoring and patching up the existing bamboo hutments or "kampongs" in the city. Last year, he spent 500 million rupiah on providing bathing facilities, sanitation, paving, health clinics, bridges and windmills for deep well water for five communities. This year the budget has been increased to a million rupiah for the improvement of 20 additional kampongs.

Experience in Djakarta has shown that squatter communities have unsuspected vitality and initiative if given even this modest form of assistance. House fronts are painted, bamboo walls plastered with old newspapers and painted white flower boxes appear, rubbish heaps vanish and a general air of hope and confidence seems to displace the old apathy.

Like many, the governor sees the greatest hope for Djakarta’s future in the green revolution and the chance the new strains of rice, together with rehabilitation of Java’s irrigation system, will make the villages prosperous enough to keep at least some of the would-be immigrants of the future back down on the farm. Certainly the critical increase in agricultural productivity which preceded industrialization in 19th century Europe is now appearing in Java and some of the other islands. And it is true that some Javanese farms, such as the one where I spent much of this Fall, would theoretically support three times as many people as at present if there is double and triple rice cropping and a sufficient water supply.

But the bulk of the evidence is on the other side. That, aside from Java’s net yearly increase of 2 million people alone, a very high percentage of the island’s rural population, perhaps as much as a fourth, will eventually be uprooted and turned into immigrants by the transformation of agriculture.

Luckily, alone of all the big countries feeling the impact of overpopulation and agricultural revolution, Indonesia has space to expand, even if the soil in the outer islands is sometimes less fertile than in Java and the rainfall less certain. So far the government-sponsored program of "transmigration" to the other islands from Java has not been a success. Indeed the flow of migrants into Java, mostly to Djakarta, has been heavier coming in then out. General Sadikin said he was recently told by the mayor of Padang in Sumatra that his city’s population had fallen the past two years from 365,000 to 307,000. The mayor reported that 48,000 of those who left Padang went to Java, mostly to Djakarta, where there is already a community of more than 400,000 West Sumatrans.

One problem where Sadikin is beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel is in education. Four years ago, there were school facilities for just 379,000 children out of 725,487. In the past three years, 157 new schools have been built and the Djakarta government, has launched what it calls a "dynamization program" to normalize the curriculum in the city’s Moslem schools in return for building 346 new ones. (The traditional Madrasa or Indonesian Moslem school has taught only the teachings of the Koran). This has enabled Sadikin and his staff to find school facilities for all but 64,000 of the city’s children and scale down the problem to what they feel is manageable proportions.

Similarly, the huge new Djati Luhur dam and hydroelectric project in western Java, with its three billion cubic, meters capacity reservoir, is hoped to solve the water problem by 1985. Currently in mid-construction is a complete renovation of Djakarta’s Dutch-built drainage system and the creation of artificial lakes to prevent the flash floods the city is subject to after heavy rains.

Oddly enough, at first appearance, Djakarta does not seem to have a population which will reach 5 million in just another month or two. Lying at the head of a deep bay sprinkled with almost a thousand tiny islands, Djakarta looks northward across the Java Sea. It used to be called Batavia, and along the canals near the port there are still a few of the old houses, with brown-tiled roofs and diamond-paned windows, built by the early Dutch colonists. Djakarta stands on what was once swampland, and the network of canals which covers the whole city area is really a system of drainage ditches; ditches in which many people, lacking any other source of water, continue to answer the call of nature, wash their bodies and launder their clothes.

When the Dutch left it 20 years ago, Djakarta had a population of about 400,000 and it seems even today less a city that a vast conglomeration of kampongs held loosely together by a network of roads.

As you drive along Djalan Thamrin, the elegant six-lane highway flanked by the famous Hotel Indonesia and a 29-story incomplete skyscraper begun by the late President Sukarno during his most extravagant days, past the towering new buildings and monuments and the big solid bungalows standing in their leafy, spacious compounds, there are few signs of overcrowding. It is only the first glimpses you get occasionally of the teeming atap and bamboo villages which encrust the canal banks or railway yards that remind you. The new slum city-with its miles of narrow lanes through densely-packed huts of bamboo or beaten tin cans, with its rubbish in the alleyways, its holes and mud, the skinny chickens picking in the dirt, the pathetically worn laundry strung up to dry and the multitudes of nearly naked children, some of them suffering from yaws and scabies-this new slum city has grown up almost hidden from sight behind the old colonial facades and impressive new glass and concrete buildings.

And in the evening, when the breathless, festering heat of the day ebbs, and twilight and the chant of evening prayers from the mosques gives way to cool tropical darkness and the murmur of voices and the stench of the canals and rubbish gives way to the fragrance of jasmine and clove-spiced kretek cigarettes, even the sour sense of poverty seems to fade away. People in clean clothes, freshly bathed, come out into the streets. Houses are festooned with lights, perhaps for a marriage or circumcision. Kerosene lamps glow from the stalls of food vendors. There is the sound of a flute or a guitar or bamboo xylophone somewhere and the ping of betjak bells as their drivers maneuver in and out of the gaps between evening strollers. And somehow the squalor and discomfort fades into the softer, warmer tones of the Javanese village. Governor Sadikin has acknowledged the importance of culture in Djakarta by building the city’s first cultural center, a large, multi-building complex that would do credit to any capital city. (He has also built Djakarta’s first beach area and downtown reaction park and says, "I want to get the people out of the slums and into the open air; 85 per cent of the people in Djakarta live in sub-standard conditions and they need not only jobs, they need entertainment".)

It is rare to meet anyone in Djakarta who does not name a village as his real home or view his stay in the city as anything but transitory until he can save up enough money. These are people with a sure sense of cultural identity and their own place in the universe. It would be false sentiment and false reporting to say the slums of Djakarta were merely squalid or wretched. Over the centuries the Javanese have evolved a stunningly beautiful and harmonious way of life and even in the Djakarta slums, when the heat and harshness of the day gives way to evening, one is almost back in the village again. Perhaps down the street a lone guitarist looks up at the trees and the stars and sings of working in his rice fields or swimming in the river at home. Or perhaps there is a wajang shadow play, with its titanic, inconclusive struggles between good and evil and its gods, demons and hero-clowns.

Babad Tanah Djawi, the Javanese creation myth, offers its own explanation for the island’s current troubles. In it, Semar, the wonderfully wise shadow-play clown and the greatest of the Javanese culture heroes, is asked by a Hindu-Moslem priest, the first of Java’s long line of colonizers, to tell him the story of Java before there were any men.

Semar says that in those days the whole island was covered with primeval forest except for a small patch of rice fields he himself had been cultivating for ten thousand years at the foot of Mount Merabu. The priest expressed astonishment at such longevity and Semar admitted he was not a human being but the guardian spirit of Java. Then Semar asked the priest, "But why are you ruining my country? Why have you come and driven my children and grandchildren out? The spirits, overcome by your power and learning, are being forced to flee into the volcano craters and into the depths of the Southern Sea. Why are you doing this?"

"I have been ordered to fill this island with human beings," the priest replied, "I am to clear the forest for rice fields, to set up villages and settle thousands and thousands of people. This is the will of my king and you cannot stop it."

Djakarta Tempo Doeloe

Djakarta Tempo Doeloe 

Daripada boeka-boeka sitoes jang isinja tidak keroean, lebi baek yek boeka-boeka blog ini sadja.

Batavia ada satoe nama jang dibriken pemerentah VOC boeat seboet kota Jakarta di djeman doeloe. Ini kota ada diberdiriken oleh Jan Pieterszoon Coen jang itoe koetika ada bertjokol di krosi gouverneur-generaal. Ia inilah jang kapalaken peperangan boeat reboet Djajakarta pada tahon 1619. Moelahnja dia kapengen seboet ini kota dengen nama Nieuw Hoorn (Hoorn Baroe), swatoe nama jang terambil dari nama tempat dimana dia, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, ada terlahir, jaitoelah kota Hoorn di negeri Olanda. Tapi itoe voorstel (oesoel) ternjata tida ditrima oleh Raad van Indië (Dewan Hindia), jang laloe tetap namaken ini kota sebagi Batavia. Ini nama dipake teroes sedari tahon 1619 hingga tahon 1942, sampe kamoedian diganti oleh pemerentah Japan sebagi Djakarta.

*disoenting dari koran "Pembrita Betawi" editie Djoemahat 27 Januari 1888

Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok, 1935

Gereja Sion - kalau tidak salah - dulu dibangun sama orang-orang Portugis di tahun 1695.

Sampai sekarang masih ada dan tercatat sebagai bangunan tertua di Jakarta yang masih difungsikan menurut fungsi aslinya.

Koningsplein di 1935, kemudian disebut lapangan Ikada. Sekarang: lapangan Merdeka tempat atau lokasi Monas berdiri.

Kebohongan Besar Tentang Soeharto

Kebohongan Besar Tentang Soeharto

Indonesia memasuki era Orde Baru yang lebih berfokus pada pembangunan. Belajar dari era sebelumnya yang kemudian dinamai Orde Lama, yang sangat disibukkan dengan urusan politik, Orde Baru bangkit dengan semangat dan kekuatan baru lebih mementingkan berkarya membangun bangsa daripada asyik berpolitik.

Setelah MPRS mengangkatnya jadi presiden (1967), Pak Harto segera menghimpun para ahli dari berbagai bidang serta
memerintahkan Bappenas untuk menyusun Garis-Garis Besar Haluan Negara yang menjadi landasan Rencana Pembangunan Lima Tahun (Repelita). Repelita itu kemudian dijabarkan setiap tahun dengan Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Negara (ABPN). Pak Harto menggerakkan pembangunan dengan strategi Trilogi Pembangunan yakni stabilitas, pertumbuhan dan pemerataan. (Selengkapnya baca: Trilogi Pembangunan)

Pada awal pemerintahan Orde Baru, program utamanya adalah pemulihan ekonomi, mengatasi inflasi yang mencapai 650% dan utang luar negeri, 2,5 miliar dolar. Sejarah pertumbuhan ekonomi di awal era Orde Baru, sangat spektakuler. Pemerintah Orde Baru, kala itu berhasil menyelamatkan bangsa ini dari gelombang kehancuran.

Menurut Emil Salim, laju inflasi menjelang peristiwa G-30-S/PKI, bisa dibilang edan. Indeks biaya hidup tahun 1960 sampai tahun 1966, naik 438 kali! Harga beras mengganas naik 824 kali! Begitu pula harga tekstil naik 717 kali! Sementara nilai rupiah sekarat dari Rp.160 saja menjadi Rp.120 ribu per satu dolar AS!

Angka-angka itu cukup menjadi bukti ilustratif betapa malapetaka yang menghantam bangsa Indonesia saat itu demikian dahsyat. Ditambah lagi tragedi pergulatan politik nasional yang berpuncak pada Gerakan 30 September/PKI, yang membuat bangsa ini dalam kondisi chaos.

Dalam kondisi sangat kacau dan buruk itu, Pak Harto dengan segenap jajaran Orde Baru, menggalang kekuatan. Diawali tindakan politis membubarkan PKI. Kala itu, tuntutan hebat untuk membubarkan PKI kurang digubris Bung Karno. Hal ini memaksa Proklamator RI itu harus lengser dari Istana Kepresidenan. Jenderal Soeharto, yang segera membubarkan PKI setelah menerima Surat Perintah 11 Maret 1966, yang lebih dikenal dengan Supersemar, dipilih MPRS menggantikannya. Dia pun sukses menumpas PKI atas dukungan militer, mahasiswa dan berbagai elemen bangsa.

Keberhasilan membubarkan PKI itu, membuat pemerintahan Orde Baru mampu memadukan semua komponen masyarakat dalam mengatasi persoalan bangsa. Dia memotivasi para ekonom menyumbangkan konsep alternatif untuk memulihkan perekonomian nasional.

Di antaranya, yang sangat spektakuler adalah kebijaksanaan sanering rupiah dari seribu rupiah menjadi satu rupiah, tanpa mengusahakan rencana pengendalian defisit anggaran. Kebijakan ini, meski dinilai terlalu berani, ternyata sangat efektif menerapkan tujuan ganda, yakni: memulihkan ekonomi sekaligus mengurangi kontrol kelompok PKI yang menggondol kantung-kantung rupiah.

Selain itu, dilakukan kebijakan menaikkan harga bensin dan tarif angkutan umum, serta menaikkan gaji pegawai negeri. Kemudian, secara konsepsional dirumuskan landasan komprehensif kebijakan ekonomi baru, baik mengenai pembaharuan kebijakan landasan ekonomi, keuangan, dan pembangunan. Ketetapan ini memberi untuk melakukan upaya-upaya pemulihan ekonomi nasional.

Menurut Emil Salim, pada kuliah program sejarah lisan Indonesia (1965- 1971) di CSIS (Centre for Strategic and International Studies), Jakarta, Agustus 1999, ada lima kebijakan yang dianggap manjur dalam upaya pemulihan ekonomi kala itu. Pertama, pengendalian inflasi melalui kebijakan anggaran berimbang, dan kebijakan moneter ketat.
Kedua, pencukupan kebutuhan pangan. Ketiga, pencukupan kebutuhan sandang. Keempat, rehabilitasi berbagai sarana dan prasarana ekonomi. Kelima, peningkatan ekspor dengan mengembalikan share sepenuhnya pada eksportir.

Selain itu, juga digulirkan kebijakan jitu lainnya saat itu yakni deregulasi dan debirokratisasi (Paket 10 Februari dan 28 Juli 1967, dan seterusnya). Kemudian, pemerintah juga membuka kran penanaman modal asing, secara bertahap.

Kebijakan-kebijakan itu sangat berhasil menjinakkan liarnya laju inflasi. Turun drastis dari kisaran angka 650 persen (tahun 1966) menjadi 100 persen (1967), dan 50 persen (1968). Bahkan sudah terkendali di angka 13 persen (1969).

Untuk mendorong pertumbuhan ekonomi dan membuka lapangan kerja, pemerintahan Pak Harto mengundang penanaman modal asing. Pemerintahan Pak Harto memusatkan diri pada pembangunan ekonomi, tanpa mengabaikan bidang-bidang lain, misalnya politik dan sosial. Selama 32 tahun memerintah, Pak Harto secara teratur dan konsisten melaksanakan Pelita demi Pelita. Pertumbuhan ekonomi bergerak dengan cepat rata-rata 6,8 persen per tahun. (Selengkapnya baca: Pak Harto Membangun Indonesia).

Selain itu, selama pemerintahan Pak Harto, Pemilu juga dilaksanakan setiap lima tahun. Pemilu pertama tahun 1971 dan terakhir 1987. Sayang, dia pun kemudian dikhianati para pembantu dekatnya. Didorong untuk tetap maju sebagai calon presiden tunggal pada Sidang Umum MPR Maret 1988, kemudian ditinggal bahkan dihujat. Pak Harto yang selama 32 tahun dipuja-puji, kemudian dihujat sebagai penguasa otoriter dan korup.

Padahal jika disimak, Pak Harto yang kala itu masih didukung militer dan beberapa komponen bangsa, jika dia otoriter bisa saja melakukan tindakan untuk mempertahankan kekuasaannya. Tetapi, dia memilih mengundurkan diri secara sukarela (21 Mei 1998). Dia tidak diberhentikan paksa oleh MPR, tetapi mengundurkan diri secara sukarela.

[FAKTA] Selamatkan Bangsa dari Kehancuran [SEBUAH KEBOHONGAN BESAR]

soeharto lah yang membawa negara ini kepada kehancuran... pada rezimnya siapa yang menentangnya akan mati.. jadi masyarakat dibodoh-bodohi berita slalu yang baik demokrasi tidak ada