9
government development grants allotted for on average 80 to 90 percent of a province’s
development budget.
10
Meanwhile, as oil prices collapsed in the early 1980s, New Order
economic policies changed tracks, wherein a deepening of export industrialization,
concentrated on Java, was instituted. Consequent gaps in physical development and
infrastructure between Java and the regions furthered.
11
Demographically, the regions were also altered for political purposes, exemplified
by the regime’s infamous transmigration program, once dubbed the world’s largest people
moving project. With massive World Bank funding, this program sent millions of migrants
from over-crowded Java (and Bali) to putatively under-populated outer islands. More than
a population-leveling scheme, transmigration was also integral to the army’s defense
strategy against domestic disturbances. Loyal “Indonesians,” i.e., Javanese, flooded trouble
spots (daerah rawan) like Aceh, East Timor, West Kalimantan and Papua in an effort to
help foster fealty to Jakarta (Budiardjo 1986).
12
The country’s compulsory educational system, whose uniform curriculum was
designed in and controlled from Jakarta, was another means through which New Order
authorities sought to Indonesian-ize its population.
13
Whitewashed histories of great
10
Much of the money was allocated through unregulated and rather randomly granted Inpres
(Presidential Instruction) funds. On Inpres grants, see Booth 1998.
11
Other developments like centralized economic policy making, increased inter-island shipping
and airline services and banking and commercial networks aided national integration. See Drake
1989.
12
In addition, voluntary migration to the outer islands was prominent as well. But this migratory
was not solely core to periphery. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Sulawesi--Bugis,
Makarese, Butonese--sought economic opportunities in other eastern islands as well. On this
phenomenon, see Tirtosudarmo 2003.
13
In this case, oil-boom money was used to build hundreds of primary schools in remote rural
areas, thus increasing school participation and substantially reducing illiteracy rates.
Convention