Noer Fauzi Rachman
A paper presented for Kemitraan, Partnership for Governance Reform, 5 Okrober 2019
“Durable inequality among categories arises because people who control access to value producing resources solve organizational problems by means of categorical distinctions. Inadvertently or otherwise, those people set up systems of social closure, exclusion and control.”
Charles Tilly (1998:8)
My biggest challenge to address the national issue of inequality was when I had taken a responsibility as one of senior advisors in the Executive Office of the Indonesian President (KSP) in October 2015. How a scholar activist with a specific background, expertise, and networks may success to work in a “brain” section of the government body, i.e. through presidential policies and programs. The significant moment was in the beginning of 2016 when the President announced a new economic policy named “Ekonomi Pemerataan” to address economic inequality seriously. One year works (October 2014 – 2015) only decrease a very little in Gini Index, from 0.41 to 0.397. “We have to work very hard (bekerja keras mati-matian), in order to decrease our statistics number on inequality”, the Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in plenary meeting of all Ministers at Bogor Pallace 4 Januari 2016.
Then, the Coordinating Minister of Economic announced in Cabinet Meeting on March 2016 that the Policy of “Ekonomi Pemerataan” has three main pillars, i.e. : (a) land programs, (b) new facilities for small scale business, and (c) vocational training, enterprenuership, and labor market.
I have a specific interest and responsibility to the so called “Reforma Agraria”, and through consultation with Civil Society Leaders, we produce a book Arahan Kantor Staf Presiden: Prioritas Nasional Reforma Agraria dalam Rencana Kerja Pemerintah tahun 2017. Then, “Reforma Agraria”, which has a long history in the world (Tuma 1965, Powelson 1988, Lipton 2009), and also in Indonesia (Wiradi 1999, Rachman 2012), started to be a new vocabulary for recent government bureaucracies that brings implications to learn a new ways of governing to address land inequality. The resurgence of this agenda was responded enthusiastically by critical scholars and agrarian movements activists who have criticized the inequality in land ownership and control because of the specific nature of agrarian politics, that facilitate land concentration, including through licenses. They did policy works to produce Ketetapan MPR RI number IX/MPRRI/2001 on Agrarian Reform and Natural Resource Management. Then since Joyo Winoto was appointed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as the Head of National Land Agency (Badan Pertanahan Nasional) the so called Reforma Agraria started to be vocabulary within National Land Agency (BPN) (Winoto 2007, Rachman 2018). After Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla were elected in 2014, the policy to develop agrarian reform was incubated in the Transition Office of Jokowi-JK (Rumah Transisi). Thus, the Reforma Agraria got a momentum in the beginning of national policy processes, which include social forestry, land right legalization, and land redistribution programs.
The most important move, which I name it game changer, when the President have announced the target of those program in specific numbers. Total target for five Social Forestry schemes is 12.7 million hectares; The total target for land legalization is 3.9 million hectares, and 0.6 million hectares of specific for transmigrants. Total target for land redistribution from state forest zone is 2.6 million hectares, and land legalization from state forest zone (PPTKH) is 2.3 million hectares. And total target for land redistribution from ex-plantation and abandon land (tanah terlantar) is 0.6 million hectares. The numbers and the managerial style of the President including by Rapat-rapat Terbatas, Blusukan, and public open ceremonies, have power to generate new ways of government to work, including by working with civil society organizations. The varieties of civil society engagements for land and forest tenurial reforms in its turn went into the 2017 Tenure Conference, “Realizing People’s Rights, Forest and Land Tenure Reform in Indonesia”, which was conducted by CSOs, Executive Office of the Indonesian President (KSP) and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK). I took a position as chair of its Steering Committee.
Then, after my decision to exit from my position in the Executive Office of the Indonesian President (KSP), in the end of January 2018, I continue my scholar activist works which covers social movement activism, research and lecture in academia, and policy work. One of the most recent intervention is how to stop the drafting of land law (RUU Pertanahan) which was very problematic in formal procedural aspect, and substantial contents. The policy, programs, and schemes of Reforma Agraria have created political opportunities and constrains for civil society organizations, experts, and government officials interact and collide, produce tensions and synergistic relations, and last but not lease make new regulations, and deliver government services. It is a good moment to rethink the limits and efficacy of civil society engagement, critical collaboration, and approaches, based on multiple CSO experiences in working with or within or outside of government. Kemitraan has a good position to initiate the significant role in making this national avenue in a good preparation. It is a place for CSOs to shows our analysis, evaluation, hope, frustration, aspiration, and last but not least visioning, scenarios, and strategies.
We are now in the end period of Jokowi JK administration, and after a long contestation in presidential election, Presiden Jokowi will continue his Presidential position in second term, with a new Vice President, Ma’ruf Amin. Recently, the Minister of National Development Planning/the Head of National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS) reported in the last plenary cabinet meeting 03 October 2019 that the status of Gini Index is 0.382 (the target was 0.36). This is a the bad result, although a good warning, a wake-up call, for rethinking on government development strategy a whole, and civil society engagements.
I am competent in the field of agrarian politics, and here I focus on structural tendencies of state agencies to take a stance to facilitate and accelerate capitalist corporate market expansion (Rachman 1999, Rachman and Januardi 2014). In terms of market as opportunity and market as imperatives (Wood 1999), what we need to learn more is about the ways in which civil societies in various countries make counter-movements against this market movements and other challenges at global level, including the so called Extinction Rebellion, which is a very recent collective articulation of people to face what they call “A Period of Abrupt Climate Breakdown” (see https://rebellion.earth last accessed on 5/10/2019).
I learn that the language of inequality is not enough to capture the transformation that has been taken place in recent times. Critical scholars think about the larger forces and mechanisms by which chronic inequality are produced (Harvey 2005, Sassen 2014, Piketty 2014). The most important quote, which is my favorite, was sentences by Charles Tilly (1998:8) which helps me to focus on the ways in which people set up discriminatory systems of social closure, exclusion and control. As I argued elsewhere (Rachman 2018), we need to frame our efforts in terms of struggle for social justice in dealing with the main mechanisms of social closure, exclusion and control.
I am very aware about the limit and efficacy of my specific expertise in my field. For the larger purpose of Kemitraan strategy, I need to expand the breath of scope how multiple forces may come together to join struggle for social justice at large, which may include multiple dimension and sector of society to fight against class, race, gender, religion, cultural, physical, and other forms of discrimination. I got help from Nancy Frasser framework (1995, 1997) that develops a very useful matrix to understand these struggle for justices, ie.: between affirmative and transformative strategies.
| Affirmative Strategy | Transformative Strategy |
Redistribution | The liberal welfare state Shallow reallocation of existing goods to existing groups; support group differentiation; can generate misrecognition | Socialism Deep restructuring of relation of production; blurs group differentiation; can help remedy some forms of misrecognition |
Recognition | Mainstream multiculturalism Shallow reallocations of respect to existing identities of existing groups; supports group differentiations. | Deconstruction Deep restructuring of relations of recognition; destabilizes group differentiation |
Nancy Frasser observes some theories of distributive justices that do not pay any attention to cultural dimension of injustice. On the other hand, theories of distributive justice ignore the economic inequalities and claims for redistribution. Her argument is that struggles for justice today requires both redistribution and recognition, as neither alone is sufficient, and as consequence of the argument, she resists the representation and the political struggle of the politics of recognition and the politics of redistribution as mutually exclusive alternatives. Instead, we should concentrate our efforts on searching for an alternative framework that can accommodate both types of demands, which is no redistribution without recognition and no recognition without redistribution (Fraser 2003).
I believe Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play significant role as creative agent to inspire state agencies, corporation, professionals/experts, intellectuals inside and outside academia, and especially youth, the most important section of urban and rural society today, to find game changers, new creative ways to achieve social justice, the ultimate aim of The Declaration of Indonesian Independence.
Bandung 5 October 2019
Selected Bibliography
Fraser, Nancy. 1995. "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemas of Justice in a 'Postsocialist' Age." New Left Review212:68-93.
_____. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Post-Socialist" Condition. New York: Routledge.
_____. 2003. "Social justice in the Age of Identity Politic: Redistribution, Recognition and Participation." in Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, edited by N. Fraser and A. Honnet. London: Verso.
Lipton, Michael. 2009. Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs. London: Routledge, 2009
Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Powelson, John P. 1988. The Story of Land: A World History of Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform. (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)
Rachman Noer Fauzi. 2011. Resurgence of Land Reform Policy and Agrarian Movements in Indonesia. PhD Thesis. California (US): University of California, Berkeley.
-----------------. 2012. Land Reform dari Masa ke Masa. Yogyakarta (ID): Tanah Air Beta, bekerjasama dengan Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria.
-----------------. 2017. Panggilan Tanah Air. Cetakan ketiga. Yogyakarta: Insist Press.
-----------------. 2018. Land Reform dan Gerakan Agraria Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Insist Press.
Rachman, Noer Fauzi dan Dian Januardi. 2014. MP3EI, Master Plan krisis Sosial Ekologi Indonesia, Bogor: Sajogyo Institute bekerjasama dengan Penerbit Tanah Air Beta.
Sassen, Saskia. 2004. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
Tilly, Charles (1998) Durable Inequality. (Berkeley: University of California Press)
Tuma, Elias. 1965. Twenty-six Centuries of Agrarian Reform, A Comparative Analysis (Berkeley, University of California Press).
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