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Effective empowerment needed to fight rural poverty
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Against poverty – A local resident carries out her daily routine at her house in an area in Citeureup, Bogor regency, West Java. (Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya)
T
he decline in poverty to a single-digit rate was one of the biggest achievements of the Indonesian government in 2018. Based on Statistics Indonesia data, the proportion of people living in poverty as of September 2018 was 9.66 percent, down from 10.12 percent a year earlier.
Although the poverty rate showed a downward trend, the challenge is still formidable because the disparity between urban poverty and rural poverty remains very high. The rate of poor people living in urban areas was 6.89 percent, while the proportion of rural poverty reached 13.10 percent.
In the aftermath of the 1998 economic and political crisis, the difference in the poverty rate between rural and urban areas was very small, with the percentage of urban poverty at 21.9 percent and that of rural poverty only slightly higher at 25.7 percent. Since the end of the crisis, however, the decline of the poverty rate in cities was faster than in rural areas.
In 2015, the 2014 Village Law began to be effectively implemented. One of the main goals of this law was to improve the village economy and address the disparity of development between urban and rural areas. In addition, the central government gives each village administration the authority to manage village funds for the local community’s welfare. Therefore, the number poor villagers can be reduced every year.
The development of rural infrastructure made significant progress. According to the State Secretariat, the government has built 191,000 kilometers of rural roads, 58,000 tertiary irrigation systems, almost 9,000 traditional markets and 24,000 integrated health posts (Posyandu).
But the impact of the massive development of rural infrastructure on poor people is not significant. The percentage of rural poverty has remained stagnant at about 13 percent over the past three years.
The government therefore decided to shift the allocation of village funds from infrastructure to community empowerment in 2019. This shift is very appropriate, because infrastructure has a multiplier effects in mid- to long term, whereas empowerment has direct impacts on villagers.
