The paper won AAS-ICAS Hawaii Joint Conference Graduate Student Paper Prize for a paper entitled, "Struggle Over Land and Land Policy in Contemporary Indonesia." The Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (SEAC) 2011. See: https://www.asianstudies.org/grants-awards/graduate-student-paper-prizes/
Noer Fauzi Rachman
Departement of Environmental, Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), Society and Environment Division, University of California, Berkeley
Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference at the Hawai'i Convention Center, in Honolulu, Hawai’i, March 31- April 3, 2011, at panel 313 “the Land, Rivers, and Villagers: New Research on Rural Politics in Southeast Asia” organized by Ben Kerkvliet. This paper was prepared as part of my dissertation “The Resurgence of Land Reform and Agrarian Movement in Indonesia” in Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM), University of California Berkeley. Thank you to Claudia de’Andrea, Louise Fortmann, Derek Hall, Gillian Hart, Ann Hawkins, Christian Lund, Kate O’Neal, Nancy Peluso, and Michael Watts, for comments and suggestions on previous versions of the paper. The field work was funded by the Ford Foundation, Jakarta. This research was also assisted by the Chancellor’ Dissertation-Year Fellowship (2009-2010), and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2010-211), from the Andrew W. Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies ‘Early Career Fellowship Program’.
Introduction
In January 2007, two and a half years after his election to office, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced a new land redistribution program called Reforma Agraria. The program was promoted in conjunction with accelerated land registration as a key government strategy for the eradication of poverty. He introduced the Reforma Agraria program saying:
Joyo Winoto, the head of the NLA had engineered this program, and he attempted to enlist the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) in providing some 8.15 million hectares of state forest lands to the land reform program, in addition to some 1.1 million hectares of state lands under the authority of the NLA. The NLA also identified for redistribution some 7.3 million hectares of so-called abandoned-lands (tanah-tanah terlantar), state lands that had been unused, misused, or used by private companies in ways contrary to government regulations. The paper demonstrates the ways the National Agrarian Reform Program, or NARP (Program Pembaruan Agraria Nasional or PPAN in Indonesian) shifted its location from the sphere of agrarian justice to land title legalization, which fit with other neoliberal policies.
The political position of this particular head of the NLA was historically unique because of the particular relationships he had with government officials as well as with agrarian activists and activist scholars. He was one of the President’s advisors and maintained close connections with agrarian reform scholars and NGO activists through his association with the Bogor House of Enlightenment (known by its abbreviation as the Brighten Institute). I approach Winoto as a policy maker as well as a channel through which the land reform idea was able to rise from a grass-roots demand to a national level policy. Winoto originally promoted the notion of Reforma Agraria, as a “basic strategy of development policy” for the pursuit of social justice (Winoto 2007). After identifying poverty, unemployment, and land inequality as a set of particular deficiencies that needed to be rectified, Winoto translated Reforma Agraria into an explicit program, which is concrete and workable for NLA officials (Winoto 2008).
In order to translate the notion of Reforma Agraria into a specific program, NLA started with what they called “delivery mechanisms” by which targeted lands meet with targeted groups (Winoto 2008). But, not all mechanisms worked, because (a) the Ministry of Forestry refused to release the 8.15 million hectares of forest-lands under their jurisdiction to be targeted by the land redistribution program; and (b) the Ministry of Agriculture refused to agree to associate their agricultural revitalization programs with Reforma Agraria.
Then, in order to make it workable Winoto especially invoked Hernando De Soto’s idea of land title legalization to frame land redistribution, which was perfectly compatible with other land legalization schemes that NLA officials were already familiar with, including the World Bank’s land administration projects. In turn, the NARP was located as a particular land title legalization scheme, alongside other schemes. The specificity of the NARP, in comparison to other land legalization schemes, is that the category of lands targeted by the program, was only “state-land” under the jurisdiction of the NLA. Then, the NARP became a government project to legalize the existing access of people to lands that belonged to the “state-land” category.
Overhauling NLA, Introducing Reforma Agraria
Winoto realized that his main constraint was the organizational principles of the NLA that had been set up since the Suharto regime to ensure land acquisition for industrial and urban development. He frequently mentioned that the President had appointed him because of his competence to advance agrarian reform policy and to face pervasive critical problems in Indonesian society of poverty, unemployment, unequal income distribution, and land conflicts. He declared,
This is a new moment, a moment to do our best to work hard; to ensure good land governance; to ensure that our land management and service is for the greatest prosperity of the people; to build a strong base for pursuing equitable land control and ownership; to ensure that land disputes and conflicts are handled systematically; to provide the best services for the people; to ensure corruption, manipulation, illegal levies, and legal abuse no longer exist anymore in this land management institution that is very strategic for the future of our nation-state (Winoto 2005b:3-6).
He decided to develop a strategy to advance agrarian reform started with complete restructuring. The NLA proposed a new legal basis that later became the Presidential Regulation No. 10/2006 on the National Land Agency. He laid-out eleven new NLA priority agendas, as follows:
1. to build public trust;
2. to improve land services and land registration;
3. to improve people’s rights on land;
4. to solve land problems in areas affected by natural disasters and ethnic conflicts;
5. to systematically settle land lawsuits, disputes and conflicts;
6. to develop a national land management information system and land archive system;
7. to address corruption, collusion, nepotism through social participation and empowerment;
8. to establish land mapping related to land ownership and control;
9. to consistently implement land laws and regulations;
10. to strengthen NLA organization; and
11. to develop and reform land laws, policies and politics.
The NLA is a non-ministerial government institution directly responsible to the President of Republic of Indonesia. The new Regulation expanded its functions to cover the making of land policy in cooperation with other national governmental agencies as well as technical services. Right after the Regulation released on April 11, 2006, he followed it up with three detailed regulations under his authority, which provided new organizational structures of the NLA and land offices at the provincial and district levels, as well as outlining main task and functions (tugas pokok dan fungsi) of each prescribed position.
Then these detailed regulations became the legal basis for his follow-up maneuver, i.e. the declaration that all positions in NLA and Provincial and District Land Offices were open and would be filled through the so-called “fit and proper tests” assisted by an independent institution, which was the Partnership for Governance Reform. The Minister of Administration Reform fully supported this plan.
Two months later, on June 21st, 2006, 717 officials moved into new positions at the same time. Eighty-seven percent of them were moved to other district/provinces. Forty-seven percent of them were moved to other positions or promoted to higher positions. The NLA officials dubbed this wave the “tsunami” because of the gigantic, shocking and drastic effects of the moving so many positions at the same time. Nobody knew who would get what position and where until the Head of NLA released the decisions. The “second tsunami” hit NLA officials ten months later. On March 2007, some 5,621 officials got new positions at the same time. In total 6,338 out of 22,684 officials were moved to new positions, or approximately 28 percent of the total number of NLA officials (Winoto 2007).
Winoto initiated the overhaul of the NLA because of his strategy to effectively show the presence of his leadership, including advancing Reforma Agraria. He perceived this strategy was successful (Interview with Joyo Winoto 11/07/2007). After Winoto got a green light from President to go on with Reforma Agraria the Head of the NLA set up the “Core Team for Reforma Agraria” composed of higher NLA officials to design National Agrarian Reform Program (NARP, Program Pembaruan Agraria Nasional or PPAN). At the same time he issued an instruction for all provincial land offices to prepare sites for pilot projects. The Core Team was also responsible for assessing the preparation and selection of sites for pilot projects, directing the pilot projects, and conducting briefings, workshops, and seminars which were oriented “to internalize the PPAN … to strengthen motive, bold feeling and thought, and unite steps to implement the PPAN” (BPN 2007:22). Then, once the Core Team reported that the pilot projects were ready to start redistribution of approximately 49,000 hectares of land, the Head of the NLA issued another instruction to fully fund the pilot projects in the national budget for the fiscal year 2007.
The most important result of the Core Team was to make Reforma Agraria workable for the NLA by creating what they called “agrarian reform models,” which basically comprised four key ingredients: (a) characteristic of targeted lands; (b) characteristic of targeted beneficiaries; (c) mechanisms through which targeted lands and targeted beneficiaries are matched; and (d) types of assistance post-land redistribution (see figure 1).
Figure # 1. A simplified basic framework of National Agrarian Reform Program
Winoto also gave a special task to the Core Team to put Reforma Agraria within the Long-term National Development Plan, which was prepared by the National Development Plan Agency (NDPA) and the People’s Representative Council (DPR). Joyo Winoto’s previous career in the NDPA enabled him an ease of communication with the drafting committee of the Plan, and provided pathways for the Core Team to bring in the agrarian reform agenda. On February 5, 2007, the President enacted the Law no. 17/2007 on Long-term National Development Plan 2005-2025, and land reform was included under the heading “Realizing a Just and Equal Development. The full paragraph is the following:
(Indonesian government decided) to implement efficient and effective land management system, and conduct law enforcement over land rights based on justice, transparent and democratic principles. Moreover, it is urgently needed to improve land control, ownership, use and access through various land reform regulations, and to develop tax incentive/disincentives according to the amount, location and use of land, in order to make weak economic groups easier to access land rights. In addition, it is urgently needed too to improve systems and substance of land law through identifying and revising land laws and regulations with considering customary laws, and improving land dispute resolution through administrative mechanisms, court and alternative dispute resolutions. In addition, land management institutions will be improved on regional autonomy and unitary state principles in the Republic of Indonesia, especially in relation to improving human resource capacity in land management in the region (Attachment of Law no. 17/2007 on Long-term National Development Plan 2005-2025, page 67-68).
Advancing Reforma Agraria to the President and other Ministries
Joyo Winoto had a dauting task which was to manage demands to adequately address diverse land related issues and critiques raised by rural and urban protesters, agrarian activists and critical scholars on one side, and to develop land reform policy that were workable under President Yudhoyono’s strategies and institutional divisions between central government agencies on the other side. This was a daunting task because of different types of practice between those two as Tania Li (2007: 11-12) distinguishes between “the practice of politics” and “the practice of government.” “The practice of politics” refers to “the expression, in word or deed, of a critical challenge. The challenge often starts out as refusal of the way things are. It opens up a front of struggle. This front may and may not be closed as newly identified problems are rendered technical and calculations applied.” On the other hand, “the practice of government” as mentioned in the introduction of this paper involves two paired practices, i.e. (a) “problematization,” that is, “identifying deficiencies that need to be rectified;” and (b) “rendering technical,” in which “a concept of improvement becomes technical as it is attached to calculated programs for its realization.” (Li 2007:12).
As explained eloquently by Li, the process of “rendering technical” – which in this case is to translate the notion of Reforma Agraria into a specific thinkable and workable program – involves at least three dimensions, which are that (a) “the identification of a problem is intimately linked to the availability of a solution;” (b) “questions that are rendered technical are simultaneously rendered nonpolitical;” and (c) “the design of programs as a deliberate measure to contain a challenge to the status quo” (Li 2007:7-8).
Winoto started with the critique of the ways the government had treated mass poverty and unemployment. He claimed that government officials rarely think critically about the limits of what he termed “end pipe policy”, which is “policies trapped only to deal with symptoms of problems but failed to identify and adequately target roots of problem. Moreover, unresolved problems tended to produce new derivative problems” (Winoto 2007a:6-7). Winoto argued that those problems were persistent because of a particular model of development thinking, what he called “colonial mode of development.”
Our struggles have to start from the conceptual stand point that we have to free ourselves – in our thought and praxis – from colonial mode of development, namely framework of colonialist, exploitative, arrested, myopic and short-term development thinking. (Winoto 2007a:5 italics in original).
He invoked Amartya Sen’s notion of development as freedom and argues that Reforma Agraria is part of what he calls an empowering mode of development.
People have to have enough access to free themselves through development processes – free from ignorance, underdevelopment, repression, lack of opportunity, and fear. And, for this purpose, people must have assets to manage and have access to empower their assets. Peasants have to have land and access to capital, technology, market, management and so on. Peasants have to have their own means of production, capacity and competence to articulate their interests. They have to have access to develop social innovations enabling them to produce social changes in rural areas. (Winoto 2007a:9).
In order to take the land reform agenda forward, he advised President Yudhoyono to convene a meeting with two related ministers, namely Minister of Forestry and Minister of Agriculture. They met on on September 28, 2006 at the Presidential office the President with the Head of the NLA to discuss synergies between land, agriculture and forestry sectors and their relation to the President’s triple-track strategy: to create growth, reduce unemployment and eradicate poverty.
For Winoto the result was not promising. After the meeting, they held a press conference in which each of them presented short statements on their own program: the Minister of Agriculture talked on agricultural revitalization programs to ensure food security; the Minister of Forestry talked about optimizing unused forest lands for private owned industrial forest plantation (HTI, Hutan Tanaman Industri) and farmer owned industrial forest plantations (HTR, Hutan Tanaman Rakyat); and the head of the NLA talked about the new land redistribution program. They intended to show that each program contributed to the President’s triple-track strategy. But they did not go together. It seems they did not agree to use Reforma Agraria as an overarching frame. Meanwhile Winoto used this opportunity to announce that the President would lead directly an NLA program that he named theNational Agrarian Reform Program (NARP), which targeted some 1.1 million hectares of state lands under the jurisdiction of the NLA, and 8.15 million hectares of state forest lands under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Forestry.
The President did not do what Winoto expected, i.e. to establish Reforma Agraria as an overarching frame for synergy between those three government agencies. Winoto initiated a strategy to convince the President on the crucial role of the overhauled NLA, and it led him to Hernando de Soto’s idea of land title legalization.
Unlike Reforma Agraria, the idea of land title legalization was not new. The World Bank started Indonesia Land Administration Project (ILAP) in 1995 – 2000. The ILAP replaced the previous land registration procedures with a more efficient and pro-market land registration. Through ILAP and its successor (LMPDP, Land Management and Program Development Project 2004-2009) the NLA had established a new land administration system with new technologies in land mapping and titling. They also developed NLA human resources capacities. These projects enabled the NLA to become a global site within which the transnational development network in land administration and management deploys their experts, knowledge and expertise, investment, etc.
Winoto invited Hernando De Soto, neoliberal theorist of property right formalization, to convince the President and other ministries on the significant roles of government in land title legalization in relation to pursuing economic growth, eradicating poverty, creating jobs – the President’s triple-track strategy. On November 7, 2007, in Presidential office, de Soto made a presentation before the President and some Ministers on the fundamental problems facing less-developing countries or developing states, or post-communist states, in their efforts to eradicate poverty. The point he presented is about the main constraint that has be solved by non-Western societies, i.e. how to bring peoples outside the property system into a rational and legal system that provides social and economic stability. He warned if these peoples keep their position outside the system, they will feel increasingly marginalized, and this could be source of violent conflict, etc. On other hand, if the rule of law is able to develop and expand to reach them, the poverty eradication starts to work.
De Soto argues that since the majority of rules that now form the basis of asset ownership and transactions in non-western nations are beyond the formal legal system, modernization in nonwestern nations, like Indonesia, must convert and transform all of these extra-legal rules into a single, integrated system of property rights and contracts accepted by all parties. Only in this way can the peoples’ lands, “dead capital” outside the formal legal system, be brought to life through land titling, entering the economic system. Thus, de Soto (2004) redefines and promotes the capitalist market system as the instrument to lift the people out of poverty.
De Soto’s theory penetrated Winoto’s thinking. In various speeches Winoto strategically quoted de Soto’s argument about the vital role of property formalization, but then he added that the property formalization could not stand alone. In an essay published in a national weekly magazine Tempo, he invoked Sen’s argument in Development as Freedom (2001) that
“the market mechanism has achieved great success under those conditions in which the opportunities offered by them could be reasonably shared. In making this possible, the provision of basic education, the presence of elementary medical facilities, the availability of resources (such as land) … call for appropriate public policies (involving education, heath care, land reform and so on)” (Winoto 2006:81).
Then, he made a term “asset reform à la de Soto” and “access reform à la Amartya Sen,“ and combined those two into an argument that “asset reform à la de Soto … is not enough if not accompanied by access reform à la Amartya Sen” (Winoto 2006:81, bold is original). The President welcomed Winoto’s notion that “Reforma Agraria = “land redistribution” + “access reform”, a formula that in turn become popular among NLA officials.
At the end of December 2006, the head of NLA reported all preparation to implement the National Agrarian Reform Program (NARP) to the President included a plan to start pilot projects in fiscal year 2007, and proposed the President to mention the NARP in his annual speech to the public. Indeed on January 31, 2007, as mentioned in the beginning of this paper, the President announced a new land redistribution program, called the Reforma Agraria program,along with accelerated land registration under the rubric of anti-poverty programs.
The Presidential speech and support from the legislatures provided enthusiasm among the NLA high officials. Thus the Head of the NLA launched a campaign within other government agencies to raise awareness and support for the new NLA institutional frame, Reforma Agraria. The main activity was to meet the top leaders of each state institution, and to explain in detail the content of the new land reform policy and its significance as constitutional obligation and Yudhoyono’s government commitment to pursue economic growth, create jobs, and eradicate poverty. In the same period, which was between February to November 2007, he also delivered some academic talks (Orasi Ilmiah) in state universities to bring the attention of academics to Reforma Agraria.
On May 22, 2007, President Yudhoyono scheduled a cabinet meeting to discuss the new land reform policy with related ministries. The President requested he prepare a presentation and briefing materials for the meeting. In his presentation Winoto approached Reforma Agraria in two ways:
a. to rearrange land laws and politics based on articles in Constitution (UUD 45) and Basic Agrarian Law (UUPA);
b. to implement simultaneously land redistribution and “access reform” based on the formula Reforma Agraria = Land Redistribution (LR) + Access Reform (AR).
b.1. LR is land redistribution process to rearrange control, ownership, use and utilization of land based on land laws and policies.
b.2. AR is a process to provide agrarian reform beneficiaries access to any resources that make it possible to optimize lands as source for their life (political/economic participation, capital, market, technology, assistance, capacity and capability building) (Winoto 2007).
He revealed in detail the legal bases and content of the new land reform policy, the preparation for the full implementation of the National Agrarian Reform Program (NARP), included identifying targeted lands, mechanism to deliver targeted lands to beneficiaries, and the need to set up a semi-autonomous agency to implement the NARP.
Winoto pushed forward Reforma Agraria to be a national agenda led by the President, although the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) and Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) did not express their interest to cooperate. At the end of August 2007 he brought a set of preparatory reports of the NARP to the President. Winoto requested the President give permission to the NLA to endorse a draft of Government Regulations on Agrarian Reform, which basically mandated the NLA to set up a semi-autonomous agency called the National Agrarian Reform Management Agency (NARMA) to manage and to finance the national agrarian reform program, to go to inter-ministry consultation, and the President agreed. The agency, designed to have regions, branches, and subsections and manage all lands and beneficiaries targeted by the agrarian reform program, has a single task “to conduct management, empowerment and financing of national agrarian reform (program) in order to optimally increase people welfare.”
The State Minister of Bureaucratic Reform agreed to the NLA proposal. The Minister provided some suggestions on governance, organizational structure and managerial aspects of the proposed agency. But, the NLA proposal was interrupted because Ministry of Forestry (MoF), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and Ministry of Finance (MoFin) did not support the proposal. NLA identified that forest-land subject to redistribution amount to 8.15 million hectares of national forest-lands designated as “production forest for conversion” in 474 locations across 17 provinces. Yet NLA calculated that, of the total “Production Forest for Conversion” area amounting to 22,140,199 hectares, local populations already control some 60 percent of that land (13,411,025 hectares) according to data compiled from NLA provincial and district level offices (Winoto 2008:56). The MoF, as the agency with jurisdiction over those lands, did not receive this assessment favorably. The Minister of Forestry refused to let 8.15 million hectare of forest-lands be targeted by the National Agrarian Reform Program. Instead, they had been advancing various social forestry schemes, such as Managing Forest with Community (PHBM), Community-managed Forest (HKM), and Customary Forest (Hutan Adat). Yet each of these categories is designated for a limited period for specific use rights and obligations, the ownership and control over all forms of resource access ultimately remain with the MoF.
Unlike the Minister of Forestry that clearly articulated his disagreement, the Minister of Agriculture did not overtly express their disageement or critique. The MoA had embarked on a set of programs under the banner of so called “second green revolution”, which was intended to increase agricultural production with concern for environmental sustainability, biodiversity, and local knowledge. It included a plan to promote a law to protect land for sustainable agricultural staples (Undang-undang Perlindungan Lahan Pertanian Pangan Berkelanjutan), controlling conversion rates of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses. According to the background paper for the proposed law, during the two decades from 1979 to 1999, some 1,627,514 hectares of Indonesia’s irrigated rice land were converted to non-agricultural uses, an average of 81,367 hectares per year. In Java alone, a million hectares of irrigated rice land were removed from agricultural use (an annual average of some 50,000 hectares), while outside of Java over 600,000 hectares (annual average over 31,000 hectares) of irrigated rice fields were lost to agriculture (Departement Pertanian RI 2007:24). The MoA also advanced a plan to set up Special Agricultural Zone, including the so-called Merauke Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), which intended to establish corporate industrial agriculture estates that would transform more than 1.2 million hectares of land in Merauke to be handed over to twenty-three national and transnational corporations to develop palm oil, sugarcane, and rice plantations to produce food and agro-fuel (Badan Kordinasi Penataan Ruang Nasional 2010a:10).
The MoFin, on the other hand, which has the authority to allocate state budget for central government institutions before the whole budget is authorized by the national parliament (DPR), questioned the NLA’s proposal to allocate three trillion rupiah (approximately USD 325 million) in seed money from the national budget to fund the proposed NARMA. An official who was responsible for processing the proposal leaked information to journalists alleging that that the NLA had failed to submit the most important requirement of such a large budget allocation which is a feasibility study showing a financial analysis of the continuity of incomes that the agency would receive. The MoFin did not pass the NLA proposal because the proposal for NARMA showed no evidence that it would be able to get income outside of the state budget. The NLA was left struggling to fulfill the budgetary analysis requirements.
Once that initiative was on hold, President Yudhoyono did not back Winoto when the Minister of Forestry and the Minister of Agriculture refused to bring together the MoF and MoA under the frame of Reforma Agraria. The President permitted each institution to develop its own main frame without synergistic relations one to another.
Targeting abandoned-lands
After being blocked by the MoF, MoA, and MoFin, Winoto, not deterred, moved to identify the magnitude of “abandoned-lands“ (tanah-tanah terlantar) defined as state lands that had been unused, misused, or used by private companies in ways contrary to government regulations, and develop mechanisms to make those lands become objects of land redistribution. Then, the NLA drafted a revision to the Government Regulation number 36/1998 concerning Controlling and Utilizing Abandoned-Land. Without revising the Regulation, NLA cannot take over more than 7.3 million hectares of abandoned-lands. The NLA proposed principles to develop adequate procedures to control abandoned-lands. Then, the NLA prepared steps to take over abandoned-lands as follows:
a. Making an inventory of abandoned-lands in provincial level (5 days);
b. Preparing verified physical and legal data (10 days);
c. Identification and investigation report (15-20 days);
d. Releasing Warrants (90 days);
e. Reporting to the Head of NLA (7 days);
f. Releasing the decision on the status of abandoned-land (7 days).
The NLA also proposed that the legal authority for the NLA change the legal status of abandoned-lands to state lands, and in turn to allocate the state lands for public purposes through land redistribution and other government programs.
The Head of NLA submitted the draft to the President, and the President agreed the draft to go to interdepartmental consultation. Meanwhile, the NLA continued to identify the magnitude of abandoned-lands in all provinces, and in the beginning of 2009, Winoto got a full report from his deputy that calculations from all provincial land offices indicated that the total land identified as abandoned-lands came to 7.386.289 hectares (see Table 1).
Then, after more than a two-year long process, in the beginning of his second term, January 22 2010, President Yudhoyono signed Government Regulation No. 11/2010 on Controlling and Utilizing Abandoned-Land. A month after its release, the head of the NLA followed it up through a national meeting of NLA officials. In his speech, Winoto emphasized that the procedure of implementation to control and utilize the 7.3 million abandoned-lands would directly link to land redistribution schemes and people empowerment (Winoto 02/21/2009).
Table 1. Identification of abandoned-lands in all provinces as identified by the NLA in 2008
| Characteristic of land right | Total (hectares) |
a. | Right of Exploitation (Hak Guna Usaha) | 1,925,326 |
b. | Right of Building (Hak Guna Bangunan) | 49,030 |
c. | Right of Use (Hak Pakai) | 401,079 |
d. | Right to Manage (Hak Pengelolaan) | 535,682 |
e. | Lands with location permit, and other permits | 4,475,172 |
| Total | 7,386,289 |
Source: Badan Pertanahan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Deputi Pengendalian Tanah dan Pemberdayaan Masyarakat. 2009.
Accelerating Land Title Legalization
President Yudhoyono’s support for land reform policy was not as strong as Winoto had expected. On the one hand, he was upset the President was not on his side when the Minister of Forestry and the Minister of Agriculture refused to support Reforma Agraria. On the other hand, Winoto, who needed to impress the President by NLA achievement, turned the focus of the NLA to fostering land legalization. He made a big push for the NLA to increase the budget for three government sponsored land titling schemes, i.e. Prona, P4T and Redistribusi Tanah schemes. From an administrative point of view, the differences between those three schemes are nothing but legal bases for land ownership, project arrangement, and administrative procedures. Legal titles granted through the Prona (Proyek Operasional National Agraria, literally National Agrarian Operational Project) and the P4T (Penguasaan, Pemilikan, Penggunaan dan Pemanfaatan Tanah, literally Land Control, Ownership, Use and Utilization) certify property based on evidence of customary ownership, inheritance, purchase, donation/bequest, or other land transactions recognised by local practices. By contrast, the Redistribusi Tanah (literally, Land Redistribution) deals with ‘state land’ (tanah negara) that has been designated for redistribution by the NLA.
The Prona is a kind of mass land titling project, which is usually requested by district/city government to help poor people in rural/urban areas to access land service from the NLA. The administrative procedure of Prona is same as voluntary individual land titling but the cost for titling activities is covered the from national budget through the NLA. The P4T is also a mass land titling project. It differs from the Prona, the P4T is proposed by the NLA provincial land office based on their own territorial identification. Before the P4T project is proposed, the provincial land office had mapped all plots at the project area, and identified who controlled or owned each plot and for what use and purpose. The Redistribusi Tanah should start with a Head of NLA decision concerning the changing status of ‘state land’ (tanah negara) that has been designated for redistribution by the NLA. In the decision the Head of the NLA specifies lists of beneficiaries who received the land. Without such a decision, the land titling process could not start.
The number of land titles filed through the Prona scheme had dramatically increased by more than 415%, from 84,150 cases in 2006 to 349,800 cases in 2007. Then it went to 418,766 in 2008. For P4T scheme had dramatically increased more than 2,500%, from 16,943 cases in 2006 to 424,280 cases in 2007. Then it went to 594,139 in 2008. For Redistribusi Tanah scheme dramatically increased 1,590%, from 4,700 in 2006 to 74,900 in 2007. Then it went to 332,935 in 2008. For the full figure see Table 3.6. Cost item allocated for each land titling case was 400,000 rupiah (approximately equals to USD 40). For some provinces such as Riau Archipelago, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, North Maluku, Papua and West Irian Jaya, the cost item was higher, i.e. 500,000 rupiah (approximately equal to USD 50).
In 2008 the total number of government sponsored land titling reached 2,172,507 – an increase of over 800 percent compared to 2004, a year before Winoto got his appointment. When added to the number of land title cases for which processing fees were paid by the two World Bank projects (LMPDP, Land Management and Program Development Project and RALAS, Reconstruction of Aceh Land Administration System), and individual landholders who voluntarily requested land titling service, the total reached 4,627,039 properties (for full figure see table 2).
Tabel 2. Total number of land certificate according to land title legalization schemes (2005-2008)
Type of Land Legalization Scheme | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 |
Government Sponsored Schemes |
Proyek Operasi National Agraria(PRONA) | 80,361 | 84,150 | 349,800 | 418,766 |
Redistribusi Tanah | 5,000 | 4,700 | 74,900 | 332,935 |
Konsolidasi Tanah | 2,200 | 1,600 | 6,635 | 10,100 |
Legalisasi Tanah UKM | - | 10,241 | 13,000 | 30,000 |
Legalisasi Penguasaan, Pemilikan, Penggunaan dan Pemanfaatan Tanah (P4T) | 43,948 | 16,943 | 424,280 | 594,139 |
Legalisasi Transmigrasi | 50,000 | 47,750 | 26,537 | 24,970 |
Sub-Total | 181,509 | 165,384 | 883,452 | 1,410,910 |
World Bank Sponsored Schemes |
LMPDP (Land Management and Program Development Project) | 330,000 | 507,000 | 645,000 | 651,000 |
RALAS (Reconstruction of Aceh Land Administration System) | 21,000 | 118,000 | - | 110,597 |
Sub-Total | 351,000 | 625,000 | 645,000 | 761,597 |
Voluntary Land Titling Schemes |
Redistribusi Swadaya | 6,227 | 34,000 | 16,798 | 39,928 |
Konsolidasi Swadaya | 6,705 | 27,530 | 23,863 | 26,688 |
Legalisasi Swadaya | 1,820,939 | 1,427,303 | 2,298,367 | 2,387,916 |
Sub-Total | 1,833,871 | 1,488,833 | 2,339,028 | 2,454,532 |
Total | 2,366,380 | 2,279,217 | 3,879,180 | 4,627,039 |
Source: Badan Pertanahan Nasional Republik Indonesia 2008 “BPN RI menjawab Tantangan atas Reforma Agraria dan Tututan Layanan Masyarakat.” Unpublished presentation kit. Page 21.
Note: The Indonesian names for the types of schemes have been retained because they are specific categories related to this particular Land Legalization Schemes. These have been described in the text above, but for clarity, the Government-sponsored schemes in English: PRONA is the acronym for the National Agrarian Operational Project, Legalisasi Tanah Redistribusi is Legalization of Land for Redistribution, Legalisasi Tanah Konsolidasi is Legalisation of Land for Consolidation, Legalisasi Tanah UKM or Usaha Kecil Menengah is Land legalized for Small and Medium Enterprises, Land Legalized for the Legalisasi P4T (Penguasaan, Pemilikan, Penggunaan dan Pemanfaatan Tanah) is Land Legalized for Control, Ownership, Use, and Utilization of Land, Legalisasi Transmigrasi is Land legalized for the transmigration programs. Voluntary Land Titling Schemes are translated as: Voluntary Redistribution (Redistribusi Swadaya), Voluntary Consolidation (Konsolidasi Swadaya), and Voluntary Legalization (Legalisasi Swadaya).
Another factor that also contributed to the achievement in land legalization is an initiative called Larasita (Layanan Rakyat Untuk Sertifikasi Tanah, literally service for people in land certification) extending the reach of land title offices to people in remote areas through a mobile service with cars, motorcycles, and boats as well as improved data processing and telecommunications. The NLA started to try-out the Larasita in Karang Anyar district, Central Java, in 2006. Then in 2007 the NLA extended the trial of the Larasita to thirteen districts in Java and outside-Java. In December 2008, the NLA had 124 mobile-land offices with 248 motorcycles and operated in 124 districts/cities.
The President welcomed this initiative. On December 2008 the President launched Larasita in a ceremony in Prambanan, Central Java. In his speech, the President expressed his appreciation of this innovative breakthrough, “Larasita is a real example of land service by the NLA for people, NLA officials ‘pick up the ball’ (menjemput bola), come to people and go to remote areas to increase accessibility.”
Every month since February until the end of November 2008 he had provincial land offices organize ceremonies attended by those receiving land titles from the government-sponsored land titling schemes. In those ceremonies, he made speeches emphasizing the central role of legalized land assets to increasing economic activities and welfare, which amplified the de Soto argument.
In mid-2009, when President Yudhoyono began his run for re-election, Joyo Winoto showed the NLA achievement in land legalization as part of Yudhoyono’s spectacular success in serving the Indonesian people. The success was presented in a one-page ad: “Land for the People. Not Just Empty Words” (Pertanahan untuk Rakyat. Bukan Omong Kosong), which was published by Yudoyono’s campaign team in the newspaper Media Indonesia of June 24, 2009 (see Figure # 2).
Figure # 2. An advertisement “Land for the People. Not Just Empty Words” (Pertanahan untuk Rakyat. Bukan Omong Kosong) published by Yudhoyono’s campaign team in the newspaper Media Indonesia of June 24, 2009
The success in transforming the NLA to become a pro-market land management institution brought Winoto into the World Bank’s Thematic Group on Land Policy and Administration (usually called The Land Thematic Group) and the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) through a conference “Land Governance in Support of the MDGs: Responding to New Challenges” which took place at the World Bank in Washington on March 9-10, 2009. He made a presentation proudly showing a successful transformation of the NLA in “taking land policy and administration in Indonesia to the next stage” (the title of Winoto’s presentation) through overhauling the organization, its function and personnel, and strategically bringing the land title legalization agenda to be compatible within a larger setting of national government objectives (Winoto 2009).
The World Bank’s Land Thematic Group and International Federation of Surveyors have joined hands in maintreaming pro-market land administration, management, and policies to developing and post-communist countries through managing international development aid and loans, deploying experts and knowledge via teaching in academic institutions, doing research and publications, professional trainings, workshops, publications, seminars and conferences, and technical assistance. They also developed some common platforms such as the 1996 UN-FIG Bogor Declaration on Cadastral Reform and the 1999 UN-FIG Bathurst Declaration Land Administration for Sustainable Development.These maneuvers brought Winoto and the newly reorganized NLA into a global conversation about governance in land tenure and administration.
Concluding remarks
For more than four decades since Suharto came into power in 1966, land reform had disappeared from the state’s political discourse. Its disappearance was directly related to the ways Suharto’s authoritarian regime had framed previous land reform practices (1962-1965) as part of a communist-infiltrated government program. The impact of the brutal 1965-1966 period further ensured that popular demand for land reform was temporarily squelched. In that era, land reform was perceived by government officials, including officials in the National Land Agency, as a politically dangerous concept. Later NLA officials perceived Reforma Agraria as a concept coming from outside of the government because it was promoted by agrarian movements, agrarian activists, and critical scholars initiating an alternative to the dominant land-for-development policy.
Through an explanation of events and episodes within the land policy processes, I have elucidated three key roles of Joyo Winoto, the Head of NLA, (1) negotiating the redefined Reforma Agraria to President Yudhoyono, his cabinet, and legislature, (2) to overhaul NLA organization, its function, and personnel, and (3) to translate Reforma Agraria into a workable program.
His success in overhauling the NLA and revitalizing the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law as the only law mandating Reforma Agraria allowed Reforma Agraria to become a mainstream policy without significant resistance from NLA officials. As the most authoritative person within the NLA, Winoto advanced the Reforma Agraria to the Minister of Forestry and the Minister of Agriculture. He framed the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) as provider of 8.15 million hectares of converted forest lands, and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) as agricultural service and credit provider for land reform beneficiaries. I have shown that the MoF and the MoA rejected a joint program of land reform under the frame of Reforma Agraria, each in its own way. Then, I have shown also the ways Winoto kept the NLA to continue agrarian reform programming, including bringing those into law and regulation, on one hand; and on the other hand, to up front land title legalization invoking transnational development network led by Hernando de Soto and the World Bank led land thematic groups.
State institutions are not unified entities. In uncovering processes by which the Reforma Agraria was conceived, redefined, negotiated, and contested, and then brought into, regulation and procedures of implementation, I have shown how the exercise of power by different government actors at the national level, including the construction of discourse, underlies the practice of policy framing. After the Ministry of Forestry and the Ministry of Agriculture refused to agree to work synergistically, Winoto started to forge what Hajer calls “discourse coalition” (Hajer 1993:47), partly by creating an ensemble of two different “story lines,” Reforma Agraria and property formalization, to convince President Yudhoyono that NLA programs perfectly fit within his “triple track strategy:” to increase economic growth, to create employment, and to reduce poverty. This move made Reforma Agraria thinkable for NLA officials.
In turn, the NARP was framed by NLA officials as one of land title legalization schemes.This framing had significant consequences in depoliticizing Reforma Agraria through what Li (2007:7) calls “rendering technical,” where whole sets of land administration related technical expertise and bureaucratic procedures such as land survey, mapping, digitalization, certificate writing, etc., are deployed by NLA officials to create a new legal status of targeted lands, and establish a new legal relation between people concerning the lands. In short, through land administration related procedures the NLA intended to exclude the highly contested aspect of land reform, and locate them outside of the NLA bureaucratic processes.*)
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According to President Regulation No. 10/2006, article no. 2, there are twenty one functions of the NLA: Formulation of national land policy; Formulation of technical land policy; Coordination of land policy, planning and program; Guidance and service of land administration; Conducting and implementing land surveys, and mapping; Implementing land registration in order to guarantee legal certainty; Issuing land tenure title and certification; Conducting land use and spatial planning, agrarian reform and special region arrangement; Administration of state/region-owned corporation in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance; Monitoring and control over land ownership; Interagency cooperation; Conducting and implementing land policy, planning and program; Community empowerment in land matters; Researching and settling land issues, conflicts and disputes; Research and development of land laws; Research and development of land sector; Human resource development in land sector; Manage land data and information; Guidance for land-related government institutions; Termination of land ownership as mandated by law; and Other functions as mandated by law.
For more detail see Williamson and Grant (2002).
