Tom Pepinsky

Category: Indonesia

  • "I Don't Feel Like I'm In A Poor Country"

    After our lunch yesterday, my colleague S, his wife, and I were walking through the mall on the way to Starbucks before we headed to his BMW SUV, when S looked around us and said "I don’t feel like I’m in a poor country."

    It’s true–anyone who visits Jakarta’s nicer areas would have no idea that Indonesia’s GDP per capita is about $4,000 US a year.  The clothes in the fancy stores cost as much as they do in the US.  The new mall I visited yesterday is approximately the size of King of Prussia, simply huge.  People dress well and have nice cars, their kids go abroad for college, it’s really quite comfortable.  But of course it’s not that way for the vast majority of Indonesians.  Most are quite poor by Western standards, and about 40% or so live on less than $2 per day.

    This is interesting because over lunch, S and I were discussing the state of Indonesia’s economy, and the fact that so many Indonesians are concerned with inflation of basic goods’ prices.  The Indonesian media certainly conveys a sense that people are fed up with the economy, but my own sense is that things are still rather good in Indonesia.  The economy will grow by about 6% this year, which isn’t China-level growth but still is very good.  A large part of popular frustration with the economy stems from the fact that the Indonesian government, like other governments around the world, has had to cut the subsidies that its has long provided for gasoline and some basic goods.  This has resulted in mass protests and widespread criticism of the incumbent regime for forgetting the interests of the people (kepentingan rakyat).

    Looking around the world, we see that everyone criticizes subsidy cuts.  I feel like a downright regime apologist by saying that governments the world over have little choice but to withdraw from interference in gasoline prices.  The amount of money that governments have to spend is fixed–maintaining subsidies in conditions of skyrocketing demand means that spending something else will have to be cut.  (The other way to go, simply declaring that prices will not rise by
    administrative fiat, is a great way to turn your country into a
    disaster; think Zimbabwe.)  Right now, it’s just an easy cheap shot for opposition politicians to challenge governments on subsidies.

    At the same time, inflation in Indonesia is tangible.  Just in the past 6 months, I can confirm that the price for basic street food has doubled (10 tasty fried things used to cost 50 cents, now they cost 1 dollar).  Regular people in Indonesia certainly feel this, and certainly suffer from this inflation.  But with petroleum prices rising, it’s pretty much impossible to think of a good way to avoid this.  From what I can tell, this is just the bitter pill that the 40% of Indonesians living under $2 a day will have to face. One thing that is good to remember, though, is that it’s easy to forget this when you can afford to eat nice meals at fancy malls.

  • JISMF

    JMP was successfully delivered yesterday afternoon to JISMF, the Jakarta International Summer Music Festival at which she will be teaching for the next couple of weeks.  It is located in Tangerang, a satellite city that is roughly to Jakarta as Queens is to Manhattan.  The voyage there is long: it was about an hour and a half drive there, a bit quicker on the way home.  Fortunately JISMF has a driver, who picked us up.  Driving that far out from central Jakarta really allowed us to see just how phenomenally big the Jakarta metro area is.  It just keeps going and going.

    JISMF is in a very neat place, from what I saw of it before returning back.  The building is on the newish side, and is being expanded further as we speak.  It has a bunch of pianos and things, along with nice practice areas and performance spaces.  It is located near a new development called BSD City, which stands for Bumi Serpong Damai, which means something along the lines of Peaceful Serpong Land or something impenetrable like that. 

    (Incidentally, BSD is all over the news trying to bill itself as the hip new place for Jakarta’s nouveaux riches to live.  The development has things like a water park, biking trails, fancy malls, office parks, its own water treatment plant, and all those things that a swanky new development should have.  The ads on the TV close with someone climbing into a helicopter, which raises the possibility to me that Jakarta will turn into Sao Paulo, where everyone who’s anyone travels via helicopter rather than sitting in traffic.)

    At any rate, JMP does not have internet access right now, but she reports that she had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant last night and that she is sharing a room with another faculty member, a young woman from Poland.  The have a staff meeting over lunch and their program starts at 4:30, so we will keep you posted on how things go.  My schedule is less exciting, but I am meeting a colleague at central Jakarta’s swankiest mall for what will probably be a very nice lunch.