Indonesia is an archipelago, with a number of overpopulated islands and islands where hardly any people live. With this in mind, the Dutch started something called Transmigration in the nineteenth century: transferring people from overpopulated islands (so that population pressure would be reduced) to less densely populated places (which could then be further developed quickly). . The idea was adopted by the Indonesian government after independence, but it is a plan with enormous snags. With the transmigration, one of the largest population movements in the world took place in Indonesia.
Dutch and Transmigration
It was the Dutch who invented transmigration (transmigrasi in Indonesian) to alleviate population pressure and poverty on Java in particular. In addition, this would give the hardworking poor a chance to work their way up and make better use of the natural resources on various islands that had been more or less unused until then. Transmigration was started by the Dutch in the early nineteenth century. The first Javanese left for Sumatra during that period to work on plantations there. In 1929 the plan was at its peak and 260,000 people were brought to Sumatra, mostly Javanese. These people had signed a so-called ‘ coolie contract ‘, which they could hardly get out of later. Mortality among these coolies was high and the conditions in which they lived and worked were poor.
Transmigration after Independence
After independence in 1949, Indonesia continued and even expanded the Transmigration Program. The program peaked in the years 1979 to 1984 when nearly 2.5 million people moved as a result of transmigration. The World Bank and many Western countries supported the policies of President Suharto because of his anti-communist stance. In 1998, Suharto was removed from power and transmigration policy was put on the back burner. Currently, about 15,000 families (about 60,000 people) are sent to new areas every year.
Goals of Transmigration
Important goals of the program were to reduce population pressure and make the population more balanced, especially in Java (where about 100 million people out of a total of 185 million live, on 7% of Indonesia’s territory), but also Bali and Madoera. to be distributed across the country. Land would reduce poverty and make better use of natural resources, which were barely used on many islands. There was also the hope that national identity would be strengthened because various population groups would become more mixed, making regional identity less important. The motto of the Indonesian government was that there were no ‘indigenous groups’, because almost all Indonesians are indigenous (the Chinese were an exception for a long time). Each family received a house, a piece of land and resources to survive for a period and cultivate the land. The planners expected that the families would at least be able to make a living from what they grew, but the yield often turned out to be lower than expected. For the migrants themselves, having their own home, education and health care were important motives for migrating in addition to the piece of land they were allocated.
Transmigration: Controversies
Transmigration has raised major controversies and problems. Indonesia has much of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest, of which about 10% is on the more remote islands. The soil of many islands proved unable to withstand the violence of the new migrants, the Javanese and Balinese soil is much more productive than that of most other islands, which quickly became exhausted. In addition, many of the migrants were not experienced farmers, but people who originally owned no land and had little experience in cultivating new land. Related to this is the problem of overgrazing and depletion of tropical forests and land, leading to deforestation in many regions.
In many areas, transmigration is seen as an attempt to ‘ Javanize ‘ and ‘ Islamize ‘ the rest of Indonesia, which has led to major problems for the original population on several islands. The local people see it as an attempt to increase economic and political control over their area, through people from Java in particular, who are more loyal to the government than the local population. The indigenous peoples of the areas, such as the Dayak of Kalimantan, have problems with the way the government treats their traditional way of life and their rights to land. Particularly in Kalimantan and Papua, transmigration has led to intense conflicts. The Dayak of Kalimantan revolted against the Madurese migrants, resulting in dozens of deaths and many migrants fleeing. In Sumatra, transmigration has created a population of more than 15.5 million migrants plus their descendants, in Kalimantan more than 2.5 million and in Papua and West Papua more than a million people.