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| Toward a More Balanced Development Since the voluntary transmigration program began in 1950, it has become a major element in the nation’s transformation from an underdeveloped assemblage of thousands of tropical islands into a modern nation and a model for development throughout the less-developed world. Transmigration is helping to feed everyone in this young and rapidly industrializing nation. It is also relieving the overcrowded conditions in one of the world’s most densely populated areas and is providing much needed employment opportunities throughout the country. The nearly 1.5 million families (6.4 million people) who have been government-sponsored participants in the program and an equal number who have participated without sponsorship are creating new opportunities for farmers, workers and entrepreneurs who are helping to lift Indonesia to the ranks of middle-income nations. In its most basic form, the transmigration program recruits poor, landless, underemployed families from Java and the adjacent, smaller islands of Bali and Madura - the most densely populated area of the world - and provides them with land and housing on underpopulated and underdeveloped islands elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago. Today these destinations are primarily in Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Irian Jaya. Transmigration to Sumatra, the island immediately west of Java and the first destination for transmigrants, was discontinued in 1992 when settlement goals were achieved. |
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