Farming on the edge

She wore a scruffy, batik turban for protection against the midday sun. Aas Juasih, 42, looked satisfied with the paddy growing on the ‘illegal’ sawah (paddy field) that she has been cultivating for more than 15 years.
Juasih’s sawah slopes down into the huge Saguling dam lake in the countryside of Bandung, West Java. In the dry season, the water level goes down a few metres and leaves enough space for Juasih and hundreds of farmers to grow rice, corn, cucumbers and other crops.

But this is precarious. During the rainy season the water level rises, the farms submerge and the crops vanish. And now, with the uncertainty of seasons, attributed to climate change, rain could come anytime and visit ruination upon farmers like her.

Farmers recall that until about five years ago such disasters occurred only every now and then and that the farmers could still easily tide over them.

“Usually the water level would reach the upper side of the dam in February and remain at that level until the end of April. In May, the water would start to go down and, in June, we could start planting in time for the harvest in December or January, before the water starts going up,” Juasih recalled.

But now the cycle has been disrupted and is often at variance with the season.

“The water level would go far down, creating huge spaces along the slope for us to farm, but along with the rainfall, the water levels have become unpredictable,” said Juasih. ‘’Now I have given up,” she said, staring into the horizon. “I just regard this as betting at a lottery,” she added.

Needless to say, the stakes are high. Hours of labour and tonnes of rice can disappear in moments or the crops could wilt in the dry season.

Where do they get the water in the dry season? The men get together and rent a pump to lift water to the paddies on the slope. A farmer pays Rp 20,000 (1.7 US dollars) for two hours of pumping. The bigger the paddy field, the longer a farmer needs to keep the pump turned on. A quarter hectare of paddy field would take at least six hours of watering or Rp120,000 (10.2 dollars).

But there are problems. Pumping up water lowers the level in the lake and affects power supply. Odah binti Supirta, 75, keeps four petak (square) of sawah and around 400 sq m of vegetable farm. Her plantation is almost on the waterline and she is acutely aware that it can get inundated in the heavy rains.
What if the water inundated her paddy and vegetables? “I just see myself betting in a lottery,’’ she said echoing Juasih.

Supirta realises that the land she is working on is not hers anymore, having been taken over by the dam authorities. But with time and situation changing, soul ties with the land cannot just be cut off.
“This land used to belong to me, to our family,” she said. “Then one day government officials came to my house and told us that the government was planning to build a huge dam and that our farms were inside the dam area. They said the dam was for the good of the whole country and so we should give up the land at the price they set Rp 400 [0.03 cents] per sq m.”

“There was no way for us to refuse,” she recalled.

Constructed in 1985, the 700 megawatt power plant occupies an area of 1,500 sq km converted from land occupied by some 2,000 villages. Many villagers said the land acquisition was done by force.
The dam and agricultural lands encircling it are managed by Indonesia Power, a subsidiary of the state electricity utility.

Politicotainment

IT is good to see young faces running for presidential race. Yes, those dreary old countenances bring bad mood to our senses, presenting the pictures of long-rooted cheap politicking, elderly arrogance, and well-packaged pilfering. These images are shifting with scruffily-dressed old people in slum neighborhood, suburbs and marginalized kampongs.

Young faces bring abundance of energy, strong determination, change and idealism. In any field of competition, these facets of youth outweigh inexperience, lack of wisdom and unripe composure.

Soekarno and his ‘pergerakan’ [freedom fighter] fellows were just at 20s when they started galvanizing this nation’s fervor for independence. At their 30s through 40s, they had turned to become leaders of the nation, run the fledging state and set unprecedented plan of nation and character building.

They paved their way to high positions until, in time, they turned dull and lumbering. Soekarno dissolved a big parliamentary proceeding called Majelis Konstituante as he feared it would result in west-oriented constitution. The last chapter of his rule saw him leading the country with iron fist.

Pewarta-pengajar televisi

Laporan kali ini sebuah round-up [rangkuman] tentang perilaku para panggota DPR yang suka tertidur selama rapat. Entah rapat-rapat komisi, hearing, atau rapat paripurna. Tak kurang ‘bagus’-nya, beberapa anggota dewan suka merokok di ruang rapat mereka sendiri yang ber-PT [Pengatur Temperatur] atau AC. Tak usah dijelaskan bahwa di sana jelas ada larangan merokok. Ini berita bagus. Pewarta dan redakturnya punya naluri berita [sense of news] yang baik.

Muncullah gambar-gambar itu: beberapa anggota dewan yang terhormat sedang nyenyak entah mimpi apa, saat rapat sedang berlangsung. Bahkan ada satu-dua shoot kamera yang menangkap suara ngorok mereka. Lalu muncul pula gambar-gambar para anggota dewan sedang merokok di ruang rapat. Hebat.

Emosi pemirsa, termasuk saya, tersulut. Saya kira mereka yang punya perhatian pada nasib negara dan bangsa akan tersedot sejenak perhatiannya ketika menyaksikan tayangan ini.

Indonesia rancu, akward English, super inferior

Saya sering tak habis pikir melihat perilaku media di Indonesia — cetak dan elektronik — yang kehilangan kepercayaan diri total kalau tidak omong atau membubuhkan ungkapan-ungkapan bahasa Inggris, padahal 100 persen permirsa atau pembacanya orang Indonesia totok. Lihat tajuk tajuk Metro TV yang merasa keren dan maju dengan ’save our nation’, ‘headline news’ ‘top news’ ‘market review’, ‘Indonesia Recovery’ dan sederet tajuk beringgris-ria lainnya. Lalu menamai pembawa acara sebagai ‘host’. Konyolnya, gaya kaprah ini segera diikuti stasiun-stasiun TV lain, bahkan sampai TV-TV lokal. Di Bandung, sebuah stasiun TV menamai salah satu acara tayangan beritanya sebagi ‘indepth news’. Untuk pemirsa Native English, Metro punya tayangan khusus program berbahasa Inggris. Jadi tajuk-tajuk Inggris yang berjajar tadi untuk pemirsa bangsa mana? Coba tajuk-tajuk Inggris itu saya Indonesiakan: ‘Selamatkan Bangsa’, ‘Berita Utama’, ‘Berita Hangat’, ‘Ulasan Pasar’, ‘Pemulihan Indonesia’, berkurangkah ke-kerenan-nya? Sama sekali tidak! Lagi pula garis bawahi logika paling dasar dan sederhana: Berkomunikasi dengan bangsa sendiri, melalui media dalam negeri, dengan para awak orang pribumi asli, kenapa harus menggunakan bahasa asing? Wah alasan berikut saya dengar berulang-ulang: ‘Untuk menjaring segmen pemirsa masyarakat muda kota’, kaum profesional muda..bah!!!

Modernity Edges Out Traditional Games

During the Ramadan fast, 10-year-old Yuceu Dewi Sakinah, like many other children, whiled away time by playing games. She and her friends played ’sondah’, a Sundanese traditional game similar to hopscotch, in front of her house in this Indonesian city.
Upon seeing them, other girls in the neighbourhood stopped and watched with curiosity. ”What game is she playing?” asked one of them. Although ’sondah’ is a traditional game in Indonesia, many of today’s city children are no longer familiar with it. They are more familiar with skating or video games, pastimes that have nothing to do with their traditional roots. Yuceu, in other words, is one of not too many youngsters who knows how to enjoy both traditional and ‘modern’ games. She also plays ‘congkak’, ‘beklen’, ‘babacakan’, and other games most of her friends consider strange.

MORE TV CHANNELS BUT STILL NOTHING TO WATCH

When Indonesia’s television industry opened up four years ago, more media freedom and wider information access were supposed to be among the benefits.

But even though Indonesians now have nine channels to choose from, media experts here say that the kind of shows and programs the stations are offering remain essentially the same.

That is really bad news, many here say. After all, during the three-decade rule of Indonesian strongman Suharto, the usual television fare consisted mostly of local and imported soap operas, variety shows and news that came straight from the government propaganda machine.

Half a Century of Turmoil for Indonesia’s Media

The early 1950s came to be known as the period of so-called ‘personality journalism’. That is, a media dominated by a few well-known figures.

It was a time when the performance of the newspaper was very much determined by the associated figure. A newspaper or magazine that did not have a reputed public figure would be ‘nothing’, and would not gain good readership.

It was also a period of idealism within the press. With very limited facilities, equipment and money, publications were able to function and run on-the-spot exclusive stories by dedicated reporters, quality articles by great writers and provide a clear vision in their editorials.

“In the past, we had great writers like B.M. Diah, Rosihan Anwar, Mochtar Lubis and several others. They were powerful and strong purely through their writing ability, not due to their position, wealth or political connections,” says Harry Sitompoel, a veteran Indonesian journalist who used to work with ‘Merdeka’ (Freedom), which was founded by journalist-turned-resistance fighter Burhanuddin Muhammad Diah in 1945.

Suharto’s Death Shows ‘Reformasi’ Merely Shift in Power

The death of former Indonesian president Suharto shows the country’s ‘reformasi’ (reformation) as nothing more than a shift in power instead of a gradual process to democracy, say analysts here.

Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono puts soil into the grave of former Indonesian president Suharto at Astana Giribangun family mausoleum in Karanganyar regency, Indonesia’s Central Java [Photo: Reuters]

The former dictator died Sunday at the age of 87 after 24 days of intensive medical treatment in the Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta. He was buried Monday in the graveyard of Javanese kings, Astana Giribangun, in Central Java, with a military ceremony led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.