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Indonesia Public Sanitation
In the late 1980s, only 40 percent of the urban
population and
18 percent of the rural residents had access to a reliable
public
water system. Most middle- and lower-class Indonesians
relied on
surface supplies from the country's frequently polluted
streams,
canals, and water catchment areas. The majority of rural
dwellers
obtained water from ground sources. Approximately 27
percent of
rural residents relied on rivers and streams that also
were used
for bathing and waste disposal. Studies conducted by WHO
during
1987 indicated that 80 percent of all open wells were
contaminated
with fecal coliform bacteria and were unfit for
consumption. Water
pumped by hand or obtained from rivers in eight rural
provinces was
also bacteriologically unsafe.
In urban areas, such as Jakarta, many residents were
without
adequate water supplies because of improperly maintained
pipe
networks and urban "water pirates" who illegally tapped
into
municipal resources. This situation gave rise to the
popularity in
the early 1990s of commercially purified water sold in
sealed
plastic containers.
Most Indonesians in the early 1990s lacked access to a
system
of municipal waste disposal that met modern standards.
Even in
urban areas, WHO estimated that 25 percent of residents
were
without proper sanitation. Many commercial and residential
areas
were served by a waterborne sewage system of open drainage
canals
discharging raw wastes directly into rivers or the ocean.
In the
slum areas of Jakarta, residents were subject to frequent
flooding
and the outbreak of waterborne diseases resulting from
clogged
sewers.
In society, education, and health, the national motto,
Unity in
Diversity, survived dozens of tests since independence.
The
increasingly thorough penetration of the central
government
bureaucracy into village life improved access to education
and
health. Rising trends toward interregional mobility and
migration
were factors tending toward greater integration of health
care
resources. However, this rising integration was achieved
at the
cost of participation in the decision-making process. Many
groups
wishing to assert their ethnic identities in ways that
went beyond
the aestheticized and highly restricted vision of
ethnicity
promoted by the Department of Education and Culture
encountered
resistance or even outright suppression. Achieving a
sustainable
balance between these various interests will doubtless
prove to be
one of the central challenges facing the Indonesia in the
coming
decades.
* * *
There are several useful sources that give a broad
perspective
on the cultures of Indonesia. For an overview of
ethnolinguistic
diversity, see Stephen A. Wurm and Shiro Hattori's
Language
Atlas of the Pacific Area. Another more dated, but
still
useful, source is Frank M. LeBar's Ethnic Groups of
Insular
Southeast Asia, which gives brief anthropological
descriptions
of many major ethnic groups. The classic source for
Southeast Asian
geography remains Ernst Henry George Dobby's South East
Asia. For a demographic perspective on population
growth,
health, labor, and migration, see Graeme J. Hugo and
others' The
Demographic Dimension in Indonesian Development.
For several good articles on the role of religion in
Indonesia,
see Indonesian Religions in Transition edited by
Rita Smith
Kipp and Susan Rodgers. Javanese culture is described in
Clifford
Geertz's The Religion of Java and Peddlers and
Princes. A good survey of beliefs and practices
associated with
sex and gender in Indonesia can be found in Jane Monnig
Atkinson
and Shelley Errington's Power and Difference: Gender in
Island
Southeast Asia. Michael R. Dove's The Real and
Imagined Role
of Culture in Development is a collection of essays
about the
relationship between Indonesian national programs of
development
and local ethnic cultures. Karl Heider's Indonesian
Cinema:
National Culture on Screen provides an interesting
perspective
on Indonesian national culture. (For additional
information and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of November 1992
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