Most of the times, to move forward progressively, the nasty truth has to be faced with brave eyes. Or else, we will keep living in denial. Those in and seek power only speak about economic growth because of the fear of being unpopular. Years from years, they come up with bad ideas that drove us into this mess. They are too scared to tell the problem like it is. They are not even willing to pull the emergence break. In order to completely understand the context of this article, all of us has to agree on one thing: the importance of economic development and Indonesia is still considered as a developing country.
The election is coming up and we all have a choice to make, but we are not going to talk about this. As a civilian, your voice does count. Despite all arguments saying that “political choice does not matter and it is just going to be useless,” you still have a responsibility to vote.
And to fulfill this responsibility, you have to make a judgment, a reasonable judgment based on logical thinking of how to make our society–country to move progressively forward by using economic development–an improvement in country’s standard of living which includes healthcare, education, institution, etc.
Obviously, all of us are wondering about the formula of economic development based on the understanding of sustainability. However, it appears that there is no uniform formula for economic development–as it conforms to a case-to-case scenario, but at least we know the list of the “bad ideas” to be avoided by policymakers in their search for development.
Let’s also agree on other things: we care a lot for economic development and only a little for economic growth. So, let’s break down the list. Does Indonesia subsidise energy? Yes, we used to. Do you remember when the price of gas was cheap? And what we criticised the government for it?
Obviously, all of us are wondering about the formula of economic development based on the understanding of sustainability.
However, it appears that there is no uniform formula for economic development–as it conforms to a case-to-case scenario, but at least we know the list of the “bad ideas” to be avoided by policymakers in their search for development.
Let’s also agree on other things: we care a lot for economic development and only a little for economic growth. So, let’s break down the list. Does Indonesia subsidise energy? Yes, we used to. Do you remember when the price of gas was cheap? And what we criticised the government for it?
Think about it this way: The government’s subsidy of energy also took a big amount of Indonesia’s GDP and government revenue from taxation. Yes, we only had to pay for 7,000, but the subsidy was meant for the poor, but, it benefits the rich instead. Thus, all we could witness was a market failure and opportunity cost as the subsidy could have been used to improve the quality of education and healthcare or infrastructure as we can see now.
How about using civil service to reduce joblessness and providing an open-ended restriction to domestic companies? Indeed, it sounds good to protect us and give us a chance. However, what we are witnessing right now is that this country provides tons of jobs for civil service and some of them do their jobs poorly.
How many times have you seen policeman just standing under the traffic-light, or best-case scenario, stop you because you broke the traffic rules to get money? What developed countries do is to encourage people to start their own business and generate employment. Is that what we are doing now? Maybe, but the government still gives little support to encourage R&D.
When technocrats criticise the government about the lack of Research and Development, do you remember the #UninstallBukalapak became the first trending topic in the world? Yes, that is what our society is “currently” capable of.
The government also put crazy high tariffs to provide an open-ended restriction to protect domestic companies. Yes, indeed, that sounds good for our economy. However, this makes our domestic producers only capable of engaging in a price war not a product quality war. What our government should do is: “I will give you 5 years to pull your socks up and improve your quality, and after that, you are all by yourself.” Yes, all we need is market discipline.
Apart from that, we are aware that our country has experienced a budget deficit. Again, this is not debt. Budget deficit is when the government spend more than they receive from taxation. And, arguably, our incumbent government was thinking to cut the infrastructure project to cut the budget deficit.
What’s the reason?
Perhaps, securing political seat because the opposition keeps on arguing that a bad thing even though it is for constructing infrastructure. This is completely wrong. Infrastructure is one of the keys to economic development. With good infrastructure, production is more productive and we can produce more than we can, thus generating revenue for our society. We are just hoping that our society could understand that.
How about measuring educational progress by the increase in school building? Big no! Although school building supports students’ extracurricular, it is not guaranteed.
We all need a good quality of education where students are not only asked to think and answer the question but could also be given the ability to write, analyse, make judgements of, contribute to maximising societal welfare through non-profit organizations and apply their knowledge to the real world. Yet, we could only see so little of that. All we have witnessed is that students study and memorize the content of a subject, but have no skills to be acquired.
Last but not least, ignoring environmental issues as an “unaffordable luxury”. Let’s not call it climate change, what we are witnessing right now is climate breakdown.
Our civilisation is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a few people to continue making huge money. It is the sufferings of the many to pay the luxury of the few. What the huge companies care is to maximise their production with minimum cost of production, which obviously destroys our environment. What we care is to consume something cheap and neglect the environmental impact that we would witness. This is one of our biggest tasks. Indonesia’s future economic growth and progressive economic and social condition will not matter if we don’t have a future to hold. And, the key is to make sacrifices by making small changes to our own lives: not using single-use plastic products and care more about the environments.
We are never too small to make a difference, but in order to do that we have to speak with clarity, no matter how nasty and scary that might be. It is our responsibility to know and aware of this, it is our responsibility to criticise with reasonable judgement to practice democracy. And it is our responsibility to care about the likelihood of our society.
