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Indonesia THE EMERGING FRAMEWORK FOR THE INDONESIAN NATION
Population
Unavailable
Figure 6. Population by Age and Sex, 1988
Source: Based on information from United Nations, Department of
International Economic and Social Affairs, Global Estimates and Projections
of Population by Sex and Age, New York, 1989, 210.
There was widespread agreement within the Indonesian
government
and among foreign advisers that one of the most pressing
problems
facing the nation in the early 1990s was overpopulation.
While
Indonesia still had high fertility rates, there were
significant
reductions in these levels in the 1980s. The overall
population
annual growth rate was reduced to an estimated 2.0 percent
by 1990,
down from 2.2 in the 1975-80 period. The crude birth rate
declined
from 48.8 births per 1,000 in 1968 to 29 per 1,000 in
1990.
Although the widely publicized goal of 22 per 1,000 by
1991 was not
achieved, the results were impressive for a country the
size of
Indonesia. The effect of the programs of the National
Family
Planning Coordinating Agency (BKKBN; for this and other
acronyms,
see table A) was particularly dramatic in Java, Bali, and
in urban
areas in Sumatra and Kalimantan, despite cutbacks in
funding. The
success of the program in these areas seemed to be
directly linked
to the improved education of women, their increasing
tendency to
postpone marriage, and, most important, to a growing
awareness and
effective use of modern contraceptives.
The reason behind Indonesia's overall decline in
fertility
rates was a matter of debate in 1992, because it was not
clear that
economic conditions had improved for most Indonesians
during the
1970s and 1980s (the middle class did experience some
improvement).
Indeed, although the number of poor decreased in the 1970s
and
1980s, landlessness, malnutrition, and social and economic
inequality may have increased for many of the rural poor.
However,
some observers argued that, despite the lack of social and
economic
improvements among Indonesia's poor, easy availability of
birth
control procedures, mass education, and more mobile family
structures may be sufficient to explain this impressive
change.
Even though Indonesia's growth rate had decreased over
the
decades since independence, the population continued to
grow and
population density increased significantly, particularly
on the
main islands (see
table 3;
table 4, Appendix). In July
1992,
Indonesia's population had reached 195,683,531, with an
annual
growth rate of 1.7 percent, according to United States
estimates.
The Indonesians themselves claimed 179,322,000 in their
1990 census
and various foreign estimates for 1992 ranged between 183
million
and 184 million, with a 1.7 percent growth rate.
Population growth
placed enormous pressures on land, the education system,
and other
social resources, and was closely linked to the dramatic
rise in
population mobility and urbanization. At such rates of
growth, the
population was expected to double by 2025. Even if birth
control
programs in place in the early 1990s succeeded beyond
expectations
and each Indonesian woman had only two children,
Indonesia's
population was still so young that huge numbers of women
would
reach their child-bearing years in the first decades of
the twentyfirst century
(see
fig. 6). This tremendous ballooning of
the
younger population groups virtually ensured that
overpopulation
would continue to be a major source of concern well into
the next
century. By the year 2000, Indonesia's population was
projected to
reach at least 210 million, with the country maintaining
its
position as the fourth most populous nation on earth.
Although Indonesia's demographic situation was cause
for great
concern, it had much in common with other Third World
nations.
Indeed, in some respects Indonesia was slightly better off
than
other developing countries in the early 1990s because it
had
initiated some of the world's most ambitious programs to
control
its population problem. The key features of these
initiatives were
the national birth control program and the massive
Transmigration
Program, in which some 730,000 families were relocated to
underpopulated areas of the country.
The population problem was most dramatic among the
rice-growing
peasants of Java and Bali and in cities--particularly
Jakarta,
Surabaya, Bandung, and Medan. In 1980 the islands of Java,
Madura,
and Bali, which comprised 6.9 percent of the nation's land
area,
were home to 63.6 percent of Indonesia's population. These
major
islands had a population density of more than 500 persons
per
square kilometer, five times that of the most densely
populated
Outer Islands.
The inability of these islands to support ever larger
populations on ever smaller plots of land was apparent in
1992,
particularly to the farmers themselves. Although the
intensification of padi agriculture had for decades
permitted the
absorption of this rising labor force, the rural poor from
Java,
Bali, and Madura were leaving their native areas to seek
more land
and opportunity elsewhere. Attempts at significant land
reform,
which might have improved the peasants' lot, were
stalled--if not
abandoned--in many areas of Java because of riots and
massacres
following the alleged communist coup attempt of 1965
(see The Coup and its Aftermath
, ch. 1). Reformers were cautious about
raising
the issue of land redistribution for fear of being branded
communists.
Data as of November 1992
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