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A roundabout reflection on development and modernity in Majalengka Regency, Indonesia.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we live in modern times, you can no longer publicly defecate by the river!”
One day, whilst I was in the middle of a highly productive daily routine, I was browsing through my Facebook page and came across a post on the homepage that startled me. In the post, a government employee working for Social Services shared an activity, the mission of which was to promote the use of public toilets in a village in Majalengka Regency, the regency where I have been residing for the last four years. The post mentioned the words “sanitation” and “modern” alongside several documentation photographs of concrete public toilets built to government project standards —with a plastic door that seemed flimsy but looked brighter because it was located next to a rice paddy field. The post was imbued with persuasive sentences, asking people to use the public toilet and quit such ‘unclean’ and ‘unhealthy’ habits called dolbon, a local Sundanese expression describing the practice of defecating by a river, rice paddy or farm; habits considered to be left behind by Modern progress.
I still often witnessed dolbon myself, albeit in different regencies. It indeed did not happen everywhere, yet for several villages the scenery had become ordinary, as a local friend put it. There were many reasons to practice dolbon; because there was no toilet inside the house, or because it’s a habit that runs deep. To return to the Facebook post; I assumed the local government was attempting to discipline and seclude community members who still practiced public defecation, thereby fulfilling the sixth point of “Sustainable Development Goals”: clean water and sanitation. The establishment of those toilets can be seen as an attempt to cause embarrassment to people who still practice dolbon, in order to be more modern by using a toilet. But why do we have to be a modern society?
From the cases I have encountered, I believe that the idea of being “modern” is continuously interpreted by anyone looking for a certain “newness” in humankind. Since the emergence of the words “modern”, “modernity”, and “modernization”, we often define such words by contrasting two entities: an ancient past and something new and stable (Latour, 1993). Modern often refers to the passing of time, to the idea that the old should be replaced by the new. It relates to acceleration and to the fear of being left behind. Modern, the adjective of “Modernity”, refers to a period after the 15th century, when the Renaissance brought along different kinds of values; from mundane values and materialistic ways of thinking and behaving, to ways of expressing the self, and self-consciousness towards the “progress” of human beings.
Modernity is intricately intertwined with technology, in accordance with life in the modern era. This technology can be anything; from a hoe or plough used to dig into the soil, to an amplifier in a village hall, to nuclear and smart devices, to Artificial Intelligence (AI). As Donna Haraway states in her renowned A Cyborg Manifesto (1991); modern society refers to a humankind that cannot be separated from technology and machines. The boundaries between human and machine, and what is natural and artificial, is increasingly obscured so that humans becomes cyborg: half human, half machine. All objects, non-objects, and machines facilitate humans’ activities. This late 20th-century phenomenon is called Posthumanism or Post-Anthropocene.
When we relate these kinds of phenomena to development taking place in a particular area, you can imagine how technologies for buildings, roads or other infrastructures relate to the people living around the area. Development, which always aims to “improve” something, with the good intention to advance the lives of people, must surely engender one, two or more responses and attitudes to the development in that particular area—from refusal to acceptance, from adaptation to divergence. With this essay, I aim to understand more about development and modernity, which is taking place in the regency where I live, as well as its relation to humans.
The symbol of modernity, so-called “airport”
Aside from public toilets, during my four years in Majalengka I have witnessed various kinds of development happening in the name of modernity and progress; highways, modern factories built by foreign investors, Majalengka’s monument that mimics a flickering Universal Studios globe in the center of the regency, and the most distinguished and most gigantic of all: West Java International Airport in Kertajati.
This distinguished airport was erected in Kertajati, one of the sub-districts of Majalengka Regency. The intention for building the airport was to tackle the surge of hajj and umrah travelling from Husein Sastranegara Airport in Bandung. The blueprints for the development had been designed during the presidential term of Megawati Soekarno Putri (2001-2004), but due to things that were never publicized, Kertajati Airport was eventually built during President Joko Widodo’s term and opened in 2018.
Looking only at the size of the airport, one can see it’s a massive project. It is estimated to accommodate five million passengers. The development of the airport cost 2,6 trillion rupiah. It was built on 1800 acres of paddy field, comparable to 3600 times the width of a soccer field. The comparison to a soccer field is only an analogy to provide a more concrete image, because in fact, the land where the airport was built had before been, predictably, home to paddy fields and settlements. Eviction in the name of development was definitely unavoidable, especially for the people from Sukamulya village, who were evicted from their land in the period 2014–2016. Farmers fought an endless resistance in solidarity, but the airport eventually remained standing.
After the airport was completed and inaugurated in 2018, the struggle of the people in Kertajati became increasingly less audible, and even less after a claim appeared in the mass media, that the Kertajati Airport was the second largest airport in Indonesia. Indeed, the airport was quite shocking, especially for local people. I remember it well, it was all over social media from mid-2018 to the beginning of 2019. I read many posts and comments by local people, most of whom mentioned something along the lines of “Alhamdulillah [“Thank God”], Majalengka has a new airport.” followed by their expectations. There was also a conflict with a neighboring regency who resented the new airport and thought it was inadequately located in Majalengka. Such responses may have appeared because the airport symbolized progress and development for a particular area. The establishment of the airport was seen as a turning point as it promoted a lesser known regency and made it more popular. Since the establishment of Kertajati Airport, Majalengka Regency has seen more and more development in the name of public interest.
We may recall how the image of an airport was used as a significant symbol of progress during the New Order era, as it appeared on the Rp. 10.000 banknote. The epithet given to Soeharto as the “Father of Development” seems to be in line with the airport appearing on the banknote as a symbol of modernity and progress. In the context of development that symbolizes progress, the Kertajati Airport has become one the “development dreams” for Majalengka people, as the expectations for the airport to open up economic access had been high. The airport built up expectations for the people in the regency to ”catch up” with other regencies. The Majalengka Regency would finally be able to receive attention and have the limelight.
Before I look further into the effects of the airport’s modernity and development on local people, it is necessary to understand what Majalengka looked like in the past. Because of its massive size, the regency of Majalengka was known as “the big village” and it was almost entirely a rural area with low and high grounds. The main livelihood of the Majalengka people was farming; rice farming in low ground areas and shallot farming in high ground areas. The Majalengka people, particularly those living in the sub-districts of Jatiwangi, were also known as roof tile makers, with the heyday of the roof tile industry lasting till the 1980s. Since the turn of the millennium, Majalengka became known as a pensioners’ city because many young people from Majalengka started to migrate to cities to earn a living or became migrant workers in foreign countries. Majalengka turned out to be “the barn of migrant workers,” one of the largest suppliers of migrant labour on Java, providing domestic workers and other informal workers for countries such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Hongkong, Japan, Korea and Singapore.
Majalengka also became a site for foreign garment factories, which emerged in a number of sub-districts in 2008. These areas, like Karawang, Bekasi, gradually turned into industrial areas. Green landscapes were replaced with gray colors, high fences, and traffic congestion during the factories’ closing hours. Currently, the main livelihood for productive females is garment labor. Low wages and long working hours were no obstacle, and they even passed a training period. For the majority of garment laborers, working with advanced technological machines was considered to be rather clean and modern. The roof tile industry and farming started to be abandoned and became seen as “dirty” work.
Workers saw the development of the airport as a new opportunity to provide them with a more secure income. Like having a dream of a better job, local workers flocked to find job opportunities at the airport long before it opened. One of my friends told me that the English course she founded was flooded by students hoping to fulfill the language proficiency requirement to be able to apply for a job at Kertajati Airport ––whatever job it was, as long as they worked at the airport. A new imagination of economic opportunities, created by modernity, was born.
Ironically, these imagined new economic opportunities never came about. Until the day that President Jokowi landed the presidential plane at Kertajati Airport, marking its inauguration on May 24th 2018, the airport did not seem ready to be operational. Although the airport had been equipped with proper facilities, the number of planes and flight routes could be counted on one hand. At that time, there was only one flight, between Surabaya and Jakarta. Several weeks after its inauguration, some friends and I visited the airport and I remember thinking, some things aren’t ready or something’s wrong with this airport. A month later, there were only a few passengers. Several months to a year later, the airport remained deserted and finally, there were no longer any planes parked there.
More than a few people were questioning why the airport was built in Majalengka. And several people started to talk about Kertajati Airport, saying that it had obviously been a mistake. I managed to read a newspaper article published by BBC News on 2th of July 2019 that highlighted the fact that the location of the airport was too far from the main cities, a 3-hour car drive from Bandung, which affected the decrease in passengers’ numbers. A transportation expert from Aviatory Indonesia, Ziva Narendra, said that the building of the airport seemed rushed and somewhat redundant, and that the airport’s functioning was rather less than optimal. Nevertheless, Ridwan Kamil, the Governor of West Java, predicted that this problem would soon be “solved” with the building of the Cisumdawu highway, which would connect Bandung to Majalengka and make everything faster. But well, this was still a prediction, wasn’t it?
‘Failed’ modernity and local people’s responses
Every day, we are haunted by dreams of development. Whether we live in a rural or in an urban area, these “dreams’ ‘ come at us from all directions, offering imaginations of “progress” and “convenience”, whilst finally taking shape in our minds. All kinds of development models appear as if to fulfill these “dreams” in the form of developmental projects; one of these is Kertajati Airport, which was thought up by the government.
Kertajati Airport did not function as an airport in general: it failed to be a public technology for mass transportation because of its poor location designation and absence of preparedness and interaction between local and central governments. As a result, because it saw little to no flight activities and did not operate optimally, it was threatened to become a plane repair workshop. In my reading, like other development projects, Kertajati Airport may be seen to be a failed development project.
Like other infrastructure development, the construction of Kertajati Airport may have come into being with the efforts and good intentions of the planners, or “the will to improve” to borrow the words of Tania Li, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Development programs to improve people’s welfare are often made to sound like a slogan of progress. The planners deliberately bring only certain issues to the fore and ignore other issues, and it instead caused new problems that can be felt today. The intention is “in the name of the people and the public interest”, but in reality, “what is important is that it’s all done”.
Seeing the failure of this development, we can regard Kertajati Airport as a monument of progress—development is only a measurement of progress for the planners and those in power which offers sufficient proof of work that has been done and even achievements that have been made. As a result, its purpose and function is not really taken into account. So, then, what has happened to this airport without passengers? A new phenomenon emerged among the local residents: the airport was transformed into a family picnic spot.
It did not take so long for the people to respond to the deserted airport. In the same year as its inauguration, whilst the inner part of the airport became quieter, the parking lanes and the entrance became crowded instead. Some people began to visit the airport and uploaded their photographs to their social media accounts. Other people followed and flocked to document the distinguished monument. The people from the neighboring village drove their open trucks, loaded with a number of people, while those coming from downtown brought along their expensive bicycles on their sports cars on Sunday morning. Although it did not operate as a common airport and entering the building was restricted, it did not matter for the people who were taking photographs in front of it. What mattered was to show the photograph of the distinguished building, taken from the carpark.
I saw these responses emerge just like that, as if there was no digesting process to get to a collective agreement to make the airport visits a new habit for Sunday mornings. I was also one of the people who agreed to find a cycling route to the airport with my friends. I only needed around half an hour by bike to reach the new distinguished airport from where I lived in Jatiwangi, it was quite fun. If before, an airport used to be a point of departure to reach a destination, in Majalengka, this airport was the destination. When the pandemic broke out, these activities happened more frequently, cycling was in fact an activity that was not limited by the government under the social distancing measures. People also assumed that exercising and sunbathing would prevent exposure to Covid-19! Visiting the airport was rather considered to be an exercise, like what my friends and I did.
The community’s creativity didn’t stop there. An odong-odong (wagon cart) route to Kertajati Airport was created––an affordable, local form of public transportation––, which was filled with mothers and children wanting to go to Kertajati Airport. Study tours organized by kindergarten and elementary school teachers kept coming. The sight of picnics and feasts was no longer foreign. The surge in visitors who wanted to see the airport and take selfies was inevitable, so much so that the road leading to the airport became congested by crowds of private cars, pick-up trucks, odong-odong and hundreds of motorcycles. Visiting the airport had become popular and it had, consciously or unconsciously, created a sense of belonging for the citizens, who enjoyed the airport from the parking lot or its surrounding areas.
From this experience, I began to question the relation between local people and the modernity that was present. The people of Majalengka seemed happy and accepted the presence of this failed development, perhaps there was no meaningful intervention left to be done, or because it was a kind of development the people desired. The community seemed to have their own imagination about the development, and continued to want the development to achieve the imagined modernity. As Jonathan Crush, professor and editor of Power of Development (1995), points out, “development has never lost its appeal or popularity, and it never will, like it or not”.
Look at how the public responds to this symbol of modernity. Residents treat it like a new public space, with a splendor that can be adored without feeling ashamed. I don’t know who started it, but it seemed like the local people’s response was organic. No one forbade them from taking photos and having a picnic in the airport carpark, there were no rules or designated car lanes, or particular instructions of where to sit at the airport. It would have been a different story if the airport had operated normally. It would have only provided for a certain social class, those who could afford a plane ticket or go somewhere by plane. However, at this point in time, there seemed to be no thoughts other than enjoying the airport as a monument of progress.
The community wasn’t really interested in questioning, let alone protest, why the airport was not operating like a common airport. Using their mobile phones, people documented themselves together with such a developmental monument, the results to be displayed on their social media. The community also swelled with pride, those who had never imagined to have such an airport in their area, even though they had never imagined to travel somewhere by plane with high frequency, at least, except for travelling for hajj or umroh. The expectation to work at the airport remained, but it eventually faded, as there were no longer any job openings to operate the flights, or at least to be a security officer or cleaning service officer. What they eventually could do collectively was to enthusiastically welcome the airport’s development and appreciate the airport’s grandeur by having picnics.
A Myth: Modernity and Development
Development, like modernity, has a complex relationship with society and culture. Esteva and Prakash (1998) argue that development lies at the center of powerful semantic constellations, and at the same time, it cannot give substance or meaning to the thoughts and behaviors of people experiencing it. Sachs (1992) shows that development is a discourse that veils poverty, wealth inequality, and oppression.
The airport initially offers modernity and technology to the public. Yet, what happened was only the fact that all parties involved were unprepared to deal with a development project of this scale. People argue it through different logics: some consider it as an enforcement to be modernized, or to be consumers of modernity. What kind of modernity do local people imagine? And modernity for whom? After all, people seem to realize that the highways and the airport were not established for low- and middle-class people. However, the continued development failures do not necessarily mean that the people did not want development. To borrow a Deleuzian term, humans are ‘desiring machines’; humans always have a will to own.
Nevertheless, we should realize that although modernity is endlessly questioned, and new theories and concepts are continuously proposed, that what is being critiqued never stops. The opium of modernity continues to be elaborated, especially by the government, developers, and mass media. Modernization dominates the development jargon, which predictably will soon reach places that are considered not yet modern, or the areas called 3T in Indonesian: “Terluar, Terdepan, Terpencil”: the outer rim, the frontier and the remote. Hence, development projects such as highways, bridges, reservoirs, or airports, are provided as the imagination of progress for local people, attached to other developmental jargon, such as ‘poverty reduction’, ‘empowerment’, or ‘participation’, terms that prevail among development policies (Cornwall & Brock, 2005). This kind of jargon is produced and maintained by developers and eventually become myths. Herbert Marcuse, a philosopher who often criticized modernity, states that many issues occur because of modernity, such as the pitfall of adopting modernity without questioning its relevance and effectiveness, which ends up becoming a “myth”. According to Marcuse (2002), modernity has nurtured humans into a one-dimensional society, its only role being to operate and perpetuate the prevailing system: Capitalism. A one-dimensional society consumes illusory needs at best, and being caught in a trap, conquers, and endures technological manipulation.
At the end of the line, I can only speculate that the picnic activity in front of Kertajati Airport of the past two years is a natural response from the people in Majalengka, including myself, to the failure of development. Phenomena like these may offer a new point of view to reflect on development issues from the perspective of local people who reclaimed it. This essay aims to reflect on how modernity stimulates local people’s imagination towards development, and critique modernity and development in our surroundings. In the end, development in the name of modernity should always be questioned. If it is not, we will continue to be trapped in myths, as in modernity that is reduced to the eradication of public defecation.
About the author:
Ika Yuliana (1992) was born in Banda Aceh, spent her childhood and teenage years in North Sumatra, and moved to Jakarta to continue her study of broadcast journalism. In 2017, she moved to Jatiwangi, West Jawa, where she joined Jatiwangi Art Factory, and initiated Pantura, an alternative library, and LAIR, a music project inspired by the music of pantura and classic tarling. She is currently continuing her post-graduate in Social Anthropology at the University of Indonesia, and undertaking research related to public issues, cities, and sustainable living.
References and further readings:
(1) Cornwall, A., & Brock, K. (2005). What Do Buzzwords Do For Development Policy? A Critical Look At ‘Participation’, ‘Empowerment’ And ‘Poverty Reduction’. Third World Quarterly, 26(7), 1043-1060. DOI:10.1080/01436590500235603.
(2) Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
(3) Esteva, G., & Prakash, M.S. (1998). Beyond Development, What?. Development In Practice, 8(3), 280-296. DOI:10.1080/09614529853585.
(4) Crush, J. (1995). Power of Development. London, UK: Routledge.
(5) Gow, D.D. (2008). Countering Development: Indigenous Modernity and the Moral Imagination. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
(6) Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, And Women: The Reinvention Of Nature (pp. 149-181). New York, USA: Routledge.
(7) Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. London, UK: Harvard University Press.
(8) Marcuse, H. (2002). One-Dimensional Man: Studies In The Ideology Of Advanced Industrial Society. New York, USA: Routledge.
(9) Sachs, W. (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide To Knowledge as Power. London, UK: Zed Books.
(10) Wijaya, C. (2019, 2 Juli). Bandara Kertajati Terbesar Kedua Tapi Jauh dari Pusat Kota: Akankah Diminati Masyarakat? BBC.Com. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/indonesia-48822004
© 2021 the author
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