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“The World is Indonesia Now”
Indonesia has been there before.  And it took the country nine years to recover.
The wise and sensible Paul Krugman’s said: “the world is Indonesia now”. He was referring to Indonesia’s economical crises, which did hit Asia and particularly Indonesia, a decade ago. Like the US and Europe now, in ’97 it also was all about going for the quick buck , dealing in derivatives, speculation (against weak currencies then, against weak system banks now) and mismanaging the risks. Even the concept of crony capitalism may be applied in both cases: there is only a thin line between membership of boards of banks and membership of governments in Western capitals, like there was only a very thin line between the Suharto family and business.
The Njai
The njai is one of the heroines in a pretty famous novel. She, njai Ontosoroh, concubine of a Dutchman, and their daughter Annelies, represent a complex and dangerous world to Minke, the leading character in Pramoedia Ananta Toer’s novel “Bumi Manusis”. Ontosoroh proves to be an extraordinary strong and independent woman. Yet as an Indonesian in a colonial society she stays a second rate citizen who even is denied custody of her own daughter after her man dies.
That was fiction.
Now Reggie Baay has published a non fiction book about the njai. It turns out to be a fascinating and moving, but also a very disconcerting account. It confirms the quintessence of Ontosoroh’s condition: the poignant sorrow of the huge inequality, in relationships which were absolutely unbalanced and which implied the women were almost without rights. Plus the immense social isolation they had to endure. Because often they were looked upon with contempt by the people of their village and excluded from the white community in which the man lived.
Baay’s book is a historical study of these usually temporary and sometimes lifetime partners of Dutch officials, planters and military men in Indonesia’s colonial times. The author himself is the grandson of a njai, about whom he knew next to nothing until very recently. Even his father had no reminiscences of this mother and grandmother, who had been send away before her son was four. And who was not allowed to even have any contact with him for the rest of her life. Her existence was kind of erased from the family history. Which started at the moment she was replaced by a Caucasian woman with whom the man legitimately married. Read More
The Paradox of the Blessed Collapse
They had it coming.
A lot of us may have these kind of feelings. Like Jake Tapper wrote: “In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms — Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves”. It’s self-evident that it tells everything about their performances. We could hear, see and read their justification. They did deserve their income. Worked hard for it. They created economical growth. Moreover they donated a lot of money to charity. And Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are still standing now, aren’t they?
And you believed them?
Kishore Mahbubani at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta.
On Thursday, the 31st of July 2008, Kishore Mahbubani – see the previous post- held a lecture at the presidential palace. His audience was the national ruling elite of Indonesia, the President himself, government members etc. And, as a courteous guest, he said some flattering things about ( and to) his host. But he also had several encouraging observations on recent developments in the country as well as some advice, worth to ponder upon, on how to do better.
He compared for instance what happened in South America and China. While thirty or twenty years ago every insider would have predicted Latin America would do much better economically than the People’s Republic of China, exactly the opposite has happened. In the opinion of Mahbubani both made the one and only right choice regarding the economical system: free market capitalism. So that did not make the difference.
“Asia is overcome by a tidal wave of common sense”
The quote is from Kishore Mahbubani, a learned and eminent Singapore citizen of Indian descent. He himself is making tidal waves in the media and universities by his books in which he castigates the West for arrogance, geo political incompetence and complacency, while at the same time he proclaims the ascent of Asian progress. While the US and Europe lack the capacity to understand the transformation the world is going through, Asia is marching to modernity with a huge, peace and stability loving middle class as result. In the process an ocean of new Asian brainpower – which always has been wasted- will become available and boost the developments.
As one might expect China is kind of a model to him. According to Mahbubani that country took two major beneficial decisions. One of them is that after the end of the cold war it didn’t copy the political system of the West (= liberal democracy), but only the economical one (free market economy). In that way it profited from the dynamics and vitality of the system, but could prevent the socio-political chaos the former USSR had and has to deal with. The other one is a geo strategic one: China offered a free trade agreement to the Asean and Asian countries and executed it. The outcome of that decision is that the Asian hemisphere as a whole benefits from a remarkable economic growth.