Indonesia Betrayed : How Development Fails

by Collins, Elizabeth Fuller

• ISBN13: 9780824831837
• ISBN10: 0824831837
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

Supporters of neoliberalism claim that free markets lead to economic growth, the creation of a middle class, and the establishment of democratically accountable governments. Critics point to a widening gap between rich and poor as countries compete to win foreign investment, and to the effects on the poor of neoliberal programs that restrict funding for health, education, and welfare. This book offers a ground-level view from Sumatra of the realities behind these debates during the final years of Suharto's New Order and the beginning of a transition to more democratic government. The author's wealth of primary data from ten years of interviews and local newspaper reportage (1994-2004) shows how farmers and laborers were dispossessed by both government policies and crony capitalism. Elizabeth Collins relates the stories of populist efforts in South Sumatra to combat "development" policies responsible for producing extreme poverty and allowing corruption to flourish. She describes how student-led NGOs worked with farmers fighting to retain their livelihoods in the lowland forests of South Sumatra. She reports on a local branch of the Indonesian Environmental Forum as it battled multinational companies and Indonesian conglomerates responsible for damage to the environment; on contract workers protesting exploitation by a company with ties to a Suharto crony; and on systemic corruption under the New Order, which spread throughout all levels of government and into civil society organizations. She examines the sometimes strained relationships between Islamists and human-rights activists, arguing that there is no inherent contradiction between Islam and democratic politics. Collins concludesthat for real change to occur, neoliberal capitalism must be recognized as a utopian ideology; democracy, imperfect as it is, offers the best hope for sustainable development in Indonesia.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Collins teaches in the Department of Classics and World Religions and the Southeast Asia Studies Program at Ohio University.

Table of Contents

Prologue : Paris, France, 1848	p. 1
Land of the nine rivers	p. 7
Reformasi in south Sumatra	p. 28
Who owns the land?	p. 53
No forests, no future	p. 77
Struggling for workers' rights	p. 98
"Where's my cut?" : the state and corruption	p. 116
Local autonomy : democracy in name only?	p. 134
Islam and the quest for justice	p. 152
Indonesia in global context : development, free-market capitalism, and democracy	p. 171
Chronology : the new order and post-Suharto era, 1965-2004	p. 193
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