Membangun Jaringan Inteletual Neoliberal: Kasus Hernando de Soto

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman

Kim Malone

 

            Ekonom dan ilmuan sosial dunia ketiga nicaya mengenal karya Hernando De Soto. De Soto saat ini adalah konsultan dan konseptor ternama kelas wahid pada skala dunia dari banyak badan pembangunan/dana internasional seperti Bank Dunia, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Komisi Eropa, USAID hingga belum lama ini,  ia diangkat sebagai ketua kehormatan dari the High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (HLCLEP), yang merupakan badan bentukan antar-pemerintahan Negara-negara Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norwagia and Sweden), yang didukung oleh pemerintah Canada, Egypt, Guatemala, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, dan badan internasional antara lain UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).  De Soto telah mendapatkan puji-pujian dari berbagai orang ternama di dunia, misalnya,  George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hamid Karzai, Alberto Fujimori, Milton Friedman, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, dll. The Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD, lembaga penelitiannya  de Soto) juga mendapatkan penghargaan istemewa dari lebih dari 20 universitas, badan pembangunan internasional, hingga perusahaan-perusahaan transnasional. Sejarah, karya-karya dan berbagai puja-puji ini dapat ditemukan dalam situs maya ILD (http://www.ild.org.pe)

Agrarian Reform and State Power in West Java, Indonesia: A Preliminary Research Prospectus

Noer Fauzi Rachman

The following is a document I made after a series of consultation with  my academic supervisor, Prof. Nancy Peluso in fall semester 2006, to develop a full research prospectus. My stage at the time was to develop a  prospectus for my dissertation research. Doctoral program at Department of ESPM (Environmental Science Policy and Management), UC Berkeley, require every PhD student to present his/her dissertation research prospectus at the moment of his/her qualifying exam. 

I. Introduction

Massive demands for agrarian reform exploded in Indonesia after President Soeharto, the leader of a 32 year-long authoritarian regime, was forced to step down in 1998.  While peasants all over Java occupied forest and plantation lands, a new decentralization law was passed, to be implemented in 2000. Rural groups and their supporters used rallies, demonstrations, and advocacy campaigns to convince new governments to endorse land reform policy. In 2001, the Peoples Assembly (MPR) mandated that the President and National Parliament of Republic of Indonesia (DPR) “reorganize land control, use and utilization (land reform) with special attention to local people’s ownership”. Five years later, little legal progress has been made, but land occupations continue.

Re: Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia

The following comments are from Prof. Kim Voss of Sociology Department at University California, Berkeley, for my research prospectus "Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia". I submitted the research prospectus as my final assignment for a course on Social Movement, Sociology 280S, Spring 2006. For her profile see: https://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/kim-voss 

My research prospectus is available at: https://www.noerfauzirachman.id/2006/05/ 

----

 To: Noer Fauzi Rachman

From: Kim Voss

 

Re:  Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia,” research prospectus submitted for Sociology 280S, Spring 2006

 

            In this very intriguing proposal, you put forward a plan to look at the many land occupations that have occurred in recent years in West Java.  You begin with a thorough and highly informative literature review of both the social movements literature and the literature on peasant revolts, arguing that these two literatures need to be brought together.  You then lay out a series of hypotheses and describe your data sources. 

            I learned a great deal from your paper. You have obviously done a lot of thinking about this project.

Lagu Mukti-Mukti: Suara yang Dapat Dilihat

   

Noer Fauzi Rachman

Naskah ini ditulis atas permintaan Mukti-Mukti 14 Juli 2006. 

Dimuat kembali untuk mengenang 31 tahun perjalanan bermusiknya Mukti-Mukti, wafat pada Senin (15/8/2022) pukul 16.00 WIB, di kota Bandung.

 

Lagu-lagu Mukti-mukti dapat dilihat dan diperlihatkan, bukan sekedar dapat didengar dan diperdengarkan. Sejumlah film dokumenter membuktikannya. Yufik dan beberapa teman lain telah membuktikannya melalui film-film dokumenter yang dibuat para aktivis gerakan agraria.

 

Dalam film Mimpi-mimpi Bertarung di Sarimukti, petikan lagu berjudul Nangela menjadi jelas sosoknya sebagai tragedi para petani tidak bertanah di suatu desa dan usaha keras untuk mengungkap sebab-sebab yang membuat mereka menderita. Alunan lagu itu bersuarakan:

 

“Satu lagi pada dunia

Ku masih ada dan bersuara Meniti hari menanam rasa Dengan mereka yang buta kata Dengan mereka yang buta peta

Dengan mereka yang dilarang bertanya Bertanya tanah yang hilang

Kenapa hilang kenapa hilang.”

 

Lebih dari itu, saya menemukan petikan lagu Nangela juga merupakan saripati dari apa yang telah dan akan terus dilakukan aktivis gerakan agraria, yakni:

“Kuharus melangkah dan berkata-kata Kuharus menanam kata-kata”

 

Petikan lagu Duka Ibunda dari syair Budi Godot, yang merupakan pembuka film Duka Ibunda, Kesaksian Korban Operasi Wanalaga Lodaya 2003 di Kabupaten Garut Jawa Barat dapat dilihat sebagai ibu-ibu dan anak-anak yang menjeritkan rasa sakit mereka akibat tindakan pengusiran petani dari tanah garapan mereka, penangkapan beberapa orang yang dituduh sebagai kriminal, dan pengrusakan rumah-rumah dan tanam- tanaman yang bakal dipanen petani. Alunan lagu itu bersuarakan:

 

“Duka Ibunda, duka sepanjang zaman Sepasang sayapnya, adalah kasih sayang Merebak di keluasan, dari ufuk ke ufuk Melesat ke cakrawala, cakrawala ketinggian Memerah arak-arakan awan

Menjadi hujan di atas dahan-dahan Ranting, akar, dahan, jiwa pohon kita”

 

Saya mengalami lagu-lagu Mukti bukan sekedar untuk mendengarkannya. Tapi saya mengalami lagu-lagu itu juga untuk melihat kenyataan-kenyataan pahit hidup rakyat yang melebihi asal mula kenyataan penderitaan rakyat, penindasan, ironi dan romantika hidup yang menginsipirasi Mukti membuat lagu-lagu itu.

 

Dengar dan lihatlah. Bandung, 14 Juli 2006

Land Reform by Leverage, Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java - Indonesia

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman, SID 18420953, May 16, 2006

My research prospectus "Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia" was submitted  as my final assignment for a course on Social Movement, Sociology 280S, Spring 2006, thought by Prof. Kim Voss. Her comment is available at https://www.noerfauzirachman.id/2006/10/re-land-reform-by-leverage.html 

 

A Research Prospectus

 

“Whoever studies peasant movements is familiar with the phenomenon of the mass invasion or occupation of land” 

(Hobsbawm, 1974)

“What you did [land occupation] can be judged easily as criminal behavior by the authorities. So, our task is to change their mind, policies and practices”

(A, The SPP’s top leader, 2002)

 

Introduction

Since 1999, more than ten thousand landless families, many of whom are the poorest of the poor, have occupied lands previously controlled by private and/or state owned plantation and forest companies in upland West Java (Garut, Tasikmalaya and Ciamis districts) - Indonesia. They have changed the land use of more than 12,000 hectares from agricultural and forest plantations to small-scale agriculture and agro-forestry fields and formed a local organization of occupants called the Serikat Petani Pasundan (SPP) or Sundanesse Peasant Union (see: Annex 1.). Beyond that they promoted their leaders to compete in village elections for formal positions in local government, mobilized their own newly acquired resources, and developed alliances with urban educated-activists, often on terms they (the rural occupants) have set. Last but not least in this phenomenal story, they have also participated in open protest activities in Indonesia’s capital city, as well as in provincial and district cities, pushing the government to change its land policies. 

Naturalizing Unequal Power and Land Distribution. The Effects of the World Bank’s Land Administration Projects

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman

The author thanks Nancy Peluso, Louise Fortmann, John Bruce, Clint Carroll and Megan Ybarra for insightful comments of earlier forms of the paper, and also to Megan Ybarra and Ann Hawkins for consulting on the English language of some part of the paper.

 

What we call land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form a market out of it was perhaps the weirdest of all undertakings of our ancestors. 

(Polanyi, 1944:178) 

Contemporary development schemes, whether in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, require the creation of state spaces where the government can reconfigure the society and the economy of those that are to be developed 

(Scott 1998: 187)

 

 

I. Introduction

In 2005, more than ten years after funding three land administration projects in Indonesia since 1994,^[1] the World Bank (WB) confidently published “Indonesia Policy Brief. Ideas for the Future: Land Policy, Management and Administration.” The policy brief justifies land projects by identifying the following problems in Indonesia’s current land policies:  

·      Efficient and sustainable resource use: Unless land rights are clearly defined (as individual property rights), it is difficult to provide those who use the land with an incentive to do so in a sustainable and efficient manner and prevent serious degradation of resources.

·      Investment climate: Businesses small and large require land to operate. Non-transparent, corrupt, and inefficient systems of land administration and allocation constitute serious obstacles to conducting and expanding business.

·      Credit markets access: The development of efficient financial markets will critically depend on the ability to use land as collateral and transfer it at low cost.

Resurgence of an Agrarian Movement in Post-Soeharto – Indonesia, Serikat Petani Pasundan (Sundanese Peasant Union), with Special Focus on Roles of Scholar-Activists

"Resurgence of an Agrarian Movement in Post-Soeharto – Indonesia,  Serikat Petani Pasundan (Sundanese Peasant Union),  with Special Focus on Roles of Scholar-Activists" was a paper prepared for an international conference on “Land, Poverty, Social Justice and Development: Social Movements Perspectives”, 9-10 January 2006 - Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, The Netherlands. Jointly organized by FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), Interchurch Organization for Development and Cooperation (ICCO), and Institute of Social Studies (ISS). The author thanks Ann Hawkins for consulting on the English language of the paper.

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman**)

 

Introduction

Are there any possibilities for villagers to regain their access to lands from the powerful parties that have stolen their lands over time using official procedures?  There is a lesson that can be learned from resurgent agrarian social movements in contemporary Java. Despite an absence of legal procedures to register claims, process disputes, and restitute land rights, these newly resurgent movements in Java have demonstrated that it is possible for villagers to regain access to their lands using the following methods: occupying their lands and setting up advocacy activities to strengthen their access to the lands.  

This paper will built on and reuse some part of my previous work (Fauzi and Zakaria 2002, and Fauzi, 2003) with a new theoretical framework, which will analyze the ways in which an agrarian social movement, known as Serikat Petani Pasundan (SPP or Sundanese Peasant Union), has been created through struggles over access to land and forest territory in the west part of Java, Indonesia. This paper will center on the last decade of the twentieth century, encompassing drastic changes in national politics and administration. Rather than claiming a neutral attitude which is impossible for any social analysis, especially coming from one who has worked as an NGO activist and who has been so deeply involved in the movement in various ways, I explicitly state that my position as a promoter and supporter of these movements situates my analysis. But, for academic and reflective reasons I revisit and theoretically interrogate part of this experience and its context, in an attempt to explain why these movements arose when they did, the ways in which the movements have found their platforms, framed their collective actions, and seized political opportunities.