Indonesia

Resources and Their Technological Development

Howard W. Beers, Howard W. Beers

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813185798
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The need to find solutions to the grave economic and political problems faced by Indonesia presents a constant challenge. In this volume, scholars in a variety of fields study a broad spectrum of the problems of this new nation. Their overall focus centers on Indonesia's land and population with emphasis on the most efficient means of developing physical and human resources.

CHAPTER 1

Howard W. BeersIntroduction

Since 1964, Indonesia has experienced one of the most drastic political and economic reversals to be observed in modern history. Former President Sukarno had demanded of his people a “stir benteng,”¹ a sharp turn to the political left. The results were frequently regrettable and need not be recapitulated here. Perhaps the most unfortunate one, certainly the most germane to our discussion, was the virtual wreckage of the Indonesian economy, to which destruction governmental neglect and mismanagement abundantly contributed. It was a period of slogans and fantasies, of expensive, nonproductive projects, and of unbridled monetary inflation.

A corrective change was demanded and achieved by the Army and the new patriots of the “generasi 66,”² and in a brief agony of political convulsion, Indonesia wrested guidance from the pilots of political romanticism, placing it instead with the designers of a new economic realism.

Under the policies of Sukarno’s successor, President Suharto, there is room for hope in Indonesia, and even for optimism. The Suharto government has succeeded in slowing inflation and in 1968 the government managed to balance its budget for the first time in the twenty-three-year history of the Republic of Indonesia. The priorities of the new government are realistic, showing a strong concern for the elemental need for food and clothing. Under the new regime, most of the expropriated properties of foreign-based firms have been returned, and the economic climate is favorable to investment of foreign capital.³

The results have been well-nigh dramatic. Between 1967 and 1968, the production of rice increased by nearly a million tons, and for 1974 (the last year of the current five-year plan) the government has set a goal of 15 million tons, as against the 10.16 million tons produced in 1968. Within the past two years, over 200 foreign companies, almost half of them American, have entered proposals for investment. Both foreign and Indonesian investors are planning to exploit such agricultural resources as timber, rubber, and sugar, and there is a rapidly growing exploitation and exploration of such mineral resources as oil, bauxite, tin, and copper. The government has marked off areas of oil exploration for over twenty Western and Japanese oil companies. After years of stagnation, the economy is reviving.

There is, to be sure, a race against time. Indonesia’s problems are great and pressing, and politically, the government needs quick and easily visible improvements in the popular level of living. To speed national development, the application of modern science and technology may well be the magical ingredient. Recognizing this, many Indonesians and foreign friends of Indonesia have begun to “pick up the pieces,” to inventory available knowledge, and to ponder how more of the data for development might quickly be made accessible.

This book is a 1967 product of the new mood. The main body of the book is a set of papers which were read and discussed in a seminar. Organized by the Center for Developmental Change at the University of Kentucky, and held in Lexington, May 21–27, 1967, the Seminar on Science and Technology in Indonesian Development marked the end of a decade of the University’s involvement in Indonesian education (at Bandung and Bogor) and expressed the University’s continuing interest.

The participants in the seminar advanced many interesting views and suggestions, some of which can be summarized. As a basis for realistic and achievable strategy toward Indonesian development, the contributors emphasized the importance of economic planning, in which agricultural development should have first priority to assure food supply, raw materials, and an export market to earn foreign exchange. In agriculture, a number of new trends seem promising: the intensification of production, the selective opening of new land areas (mainly through improved irrigation), the acceptance of petrochemicals as new sources of clothing materials, and the reorganization of production for export. Other promising trends include stress on vocational agricultural education, the introduction of regional experiment stations and testing programs, a further strengthening and development of the Agricultural University and its affiliated faculties, feasibility studies for rural development, and further application of the “mass guidance” (BIMAS)⁴ techniques in tropical agriculture, in rural development, and in research and graduate study of the agricultural and biological sciences.

The seminar emphasized the need for vigorous further exploration and development of marine resources in the seas around the islands. There is also need for widening exploration of mineral reserves, especially of oil, but including sources of phosphates for fertilizer. It is important that the scientific data resulting from such explorations be accumulated, preserved, and shared.

The seminar, recognizing the serious lack in Indonesia of data and records essential to economic planning, urged that the Indonesian government and other agencies, as a matter of high priority, establish records of economic activity.

In relation to the need for intensified research in many fields, the seminar participants discussed the relative needs for basic versus applied research and concluded that Indonesian development currently requires “oriented research” on topics of vital importance to Indonesian growth and applicable to the improvement of technology and the solution of developmental problems.

Economic research, in particular, could be made more practical. There is need for a better inventory of existing information and of improved utilization of data already collected. Research projects should be chosen carefully and, to insure coordination with national policy, should be discussed in advance with the men who make that policy. To be of practical value, the research should be based on something more than professional interest, though the research itself should be a thoroughly professional and unprejudiced analysis. Projects should have sufficient duration and continuity to provide at least preliminary reports as pilot projects. They should also be kept to a scale that can be coped with in present-day conditions. Nationwide surveys of ambitious scope can be deferred; projects which can exert an early influence in the making of policy will be a greater contribution to economic advancement.

Seminar opinion favored the principle of joint scientific and technical activity by Indonesian and foreign scholars and research workers, as offering a more useful relationship than the conventional technical assistance arrangements in earlier years. In the long run, the foreigner who comes to Indonesia as a visiting scientist and works with Indonesian colleagues at operational levels performs a more effective educational service than the one who comes specifically to give instruction or to do “hit and run” research.

Oriented research was discussed also as a guiding principle for the various institutes, especially the National Biological Institute and its sister organizations, which require support not only in the context of national development but also as participants in world science. Indonesia, through its research institutes, its marine science establishments, and biological field stations, is moving into a position of capability to make important contributions to world science, from which it deserves and requires corresponding support. In organizing its participation in national development, in world science, and in Southeast Asian regional development, Indonesia requires the utmost cooperation, intercommunication, and mutual support among its own institutes, faculties, and professional personnel, including joint participation in research, technical cooperation, and projects for national development. Indonesia must work toward the development of its own scientists, by developing Indonesianized methods of science education extending eventually from the elementary through graduate levels.

As indicated above, the seminar took a favorable (though possibly overoptimistic) view of the BIMAS project, in which students have lived among villagers while instructing, advising, and encouraging them to use better farming (rice production) methods. The BIMAS principle can also be applied to other kinds of food production, health education, and nutrition education. Graduates and civic volunteers, as well as students, should be included in BIMAS projects. Obviously, these students and volunteers must be supplied with technical information, and they will require some supervision by technically competent superiors. Administrative controls, however, should not be heavyhanded; BIMAS projects, by their very nature, are most effective when least bureaucratized.

The discussion of BIMAS drew the seminar’s attention to broad questions of motivation and incentives—because the enthusiasm of students has been a key ingredient to the early success of the program. This led the seminar to conclude that attention to incentives must be a part of all developmental planning, if popular cooperation is required. The pattern of incentives may vary, but the profit motive should never be ignored.

Seminar discussions also touched on several problems of health, nutrition, and medical science and technology. The most urgent nutrition problem in Indonesia is that of preschool children, for whom food deficiency has lifelong effects. Mothers must supplement breast feeding before babies are six months old. In addition to rice, protein must be increased by use, among various sources, of beans, greens, fish, and sweet potatoes. Other nutrition problems are also serious, but the need of the preschool children in Indonesia is of an emergency character, not only to reduce infant mortality, but to assure a future population of healthy and productive adults. A high infant death rate is not an acceptable means of population control. In this connection, the seminar accepted the conclusion that population limitation by family planning and birth control require immediate large-scale support and implementation as a central feature of national policy. Food production can catch up with population increase only if the rate of population increase is reduced.

It is necessary for Indonesia to take up again the establishment of health programs and services and the training of medical and paramedical personnel, a situation which deserves the attention of international bodies. In the field of public health, the needs of Indonesia are current and urgent: provision of some training abroad (which will be necessary for several years to come); collaborative research by Indonesian and foreign specialists; and special programs in public health, rodent control, immunization, sanitation, health education, insect control, hospital administration, and tuberculosis prevention and control. The quality of medical education in the twelve or more medical schools also requires improvement.

The seminar was particularly interested in several aspects of getting and supplying the information vital to all the processes of development. One aspect of this is research. But, to put urgently needed technical information in the possession of those who must use it for developmental changes—in agriculture, as well as in other fields—systems are needed for preparing and regularly distributing usable, easily read, and readily comprehensible summaries, digests, and interpretations of currently important technical knowledge. Institutions and persons concerned with promoting development should undertake projects of this nature to make technical information available to the extension agents, supervisers, administrators, and even the policy-makers.

The book’s home is a library. Indonesia’s storehouse of the world’s culture, and its working library of knowledge which can aid development, requires the establishment of a national library system with strong centers for the acquisition, accumulation, and maintenance of materials, and with affiliated specialized subcenters in provincial libraries, institutes, and schools. Implementation of plans for such a national system is urgently important to Indonesia’s development.

There is need for a national law to require the copyright-deposit of every book or journal published in Indonesia. Because of the lack of such a law, there is no comprehensive or inclusive national bibliography. This is a great handicap to students and all persons who must consult written materials, and the situation could be set straight by the enactment and enforcement of a simple law on the subject.

A major suggestion for Indonesia’s reservoir of technical and scientific knowledge is that international provision should be made for continuous microfilm and microcard reproduction of essential books and scientific journals, and for their regular placement in an Indonesian national library and documentation system, with equipment for further reproduction and distribution within the nation.

As can be observed, the range of our seminar discussion, though wide, is by no means comprehensive, even within the limits of its general subject, for the selection of papers was limited to topics for which specialists with recent research experience in Indonesia could be commissioned. The value of these discussions is much enhanced, however, by the competence and diverse professional backgrounds of the participants. The forty members of the seminar who presented papers or took part in the discussion came to Lexington from the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Bogor, the Institute of Technology in Bandung, the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.), the Economic Development Institute of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, the Provisional Parliament in Indonesia, the Office of International Scientific and Technological Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, the Agency for International Development, the Agricultural Development Council, Inc., the Ford Foundation, the Universities of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, the University of the Philippines, and the Universities of Oregon, Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Western Michigan, Yale, Chicago, Florida, and Valparaiso (Indiana). In addition, there were observer participants from the former University of Kentucky—AID contract teams at Bandung and Bogor, from the University of Kentucky Faculty Committee on Indonesia, and from the staff of the Center for Developmental Change.

Members of the seminar were unanimous in their hopes for Indonesia’s success in achieving development and in their confidence that science and technology will be effectively applied in the fuller utilization of the nation’s vast natural resources and human talent.

After the seminar, several authors revised their papers to take into account some of the discussion which had occurred during the meetings, and some additional materials were prepared. Dr. Leon Mears was invited to contribute his paper on rice production because of its timeliness and relevance to the discussions on agriculture. Dr. Vincent Nelson broadened the coverage of Koesoemadinata’s paper, which dealt initially only with petroleum resources. Dr. Karl Pelzer participated in the seminar as a discussant. Because of a prior commitment, Dr. Murray Thomas was unable to accept an invitation to participate in the seminar, but he later prepared the chapter on science education which is included in this volume.

Initially it was not intended that discussion would be included with the published papers. Study of the taped record, however, indicated that discussants had offered some additional material from which selected condensations are here included.

¹ Stir benteng: literally “buffalo turn,” a corrective swerve to be enforced with the ferocity of the wild buffalo, a traditional symbol of ethnic power.

² Generasi ’66. A term applied to the students and youths who exerted pressure on the Army to hasten Sukarno’s denigration.

³ According to the Far Eastern Economic Review of March 13, 1969, the Foreign Investment Board reports that foreign investments since 1967 have totaled US$ 475 million, mostly in oil, mining, and forestry.

⁴ Bimas S.S.B.M., Bimbingan Massal Swa Semboda Bahan Makanan. Mass guidance toward self-sufficiency in food production.

Part ILand, Man, Determination

CHAPTER 2

Suwito KusumowidagdoLand, Man, and His Determination to Work

Indonesia is a land of vast problems and great opportunities. It is a nation which, since its very beginning, has been in continuous struggle, first for national liberation and then for a new and respectable identity in the community of nations. Only recently has it emerged from a period of civil disorders and threats to its national unity.

It is in such a political atmosphere that free Indonesia has entered its third decade of national existence and has embarked upon a political and economic stabilization ...