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Transmigration’s Ebb and Flow

Both the growth of transmigration and its decline are the result of economic factors outside the transmigration program. As these developments changed Indonesia’s economy, they also brought about major changes in transmigration itself.

Until the mid-1980s, Indonesia’s economy was based primarily on oil exports. High petroleum-based revenues fueled overall economic expansion and the growing transmigration program. In 1986, the collapse of world oil prices after months of declining revenues led the nation both to reduce expenditures and to reorganize and redirect its economy away from dependence on oil exports.

The drop in revenue all but halted the transmigration program in 1987, producing a period of internal examination that helped accelerate changes already taking place in the plan’s philosophy and goals.

Conceived with the idea that it could provide a better life for families, reduce overpopulation on Java, Bali and Madura, and increase the production of rice, experience had shown that while the transmigration program could alleviate problems in these areas, it alone could not solve them.

Indonesia had for some time been the largest importer of rice in the world, but by 1984, transmigrants had helped the country to achieve self-sufficiency in its staple food. The annual income of transmigrants was averaging almost twice that of comparable farmers in the areas from which they came, but the rapid expansion of transmigration was showing signs of overwhelming the system. Pressure to achieve higher goals at a faster pace was sometimes accompanied by administrative errors that distorted the effectiveness of the program. Some new settlements were inadequately prepared and poorly situated. There were villages, for example, that lacked the all-weather roads needed to connect them to markets; other villages did not receive timely allotments of fertilizer and food. The emphasis on rice production was problematic for farmers in areas where the soil was more suitable for other crops particularly in Kalimantan and IrianJaya. While there is no doubt that transmigration was alleviating population pressures on Java and providing jobs, the more effective, long-term solution to excess population lay in the family planning program, already enjoying phenomenal success, and in the new jobs being created by the more rapid industrialization that accompanied economic reform.
 

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