Noer Fauzi Rachman
A paper presented for Kemitraan, Partnership for Governance Reform, 5 Okrober 2019
“Durable inequality among categories arises because people who control access to value producing resources solve organizational problems by means of categorical distinctions. Inadvertently or otherwise, those people set up systems of social closure, exclusion and control.”
Charles Tilly (1998:8)
My biggest challenge to address the national issue of inequality was when I had taken a responsibility as one of senior advisors in the Executive Office of the Indonesian President (KSP) in October 2015. How a scholar activist with a specific background, expertise, and networks may success to work in a “brain” section of the government body, i.e. through presidential policies and programs. The significant moment was in the beginning of 2016 when the President announced a new economic policy named “Ekonomi Pemerataan” to address economic inequality seriously. One year works (October 2014 – 2015) only decrease a very little in Gini Index, from 0.41 to 0.397. “We have to work very hard (bekerja keras mati-matian), in order to decrease our statistics number on inequality”, the Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in plenary meeting of all Ministers at Bogor Pallace 4 Januari 2016.
Then, the Coordinating Minister of Economic announced in Cabinet Meeting on March 2016 that the Policy of “Ekonomi Pemerataan” has three main pillars, i.e. : (a) land programs, (b) new facilities for small scale business, and (c) vocational training, enterprenuership, and labor market.






