Dear all,
Mungkin ada yang tertarik untuk membaca buku yang baru saja diterbitkan
oleh CSIS Jkt (resensinya ada dibawah). Bukunya enak dibaca sekitar 100
halaman, masalah yang dikupas semua kita sudah tahu. Yang menarik
penulisnya adalah profesor emeritus dari Australia tapi tidak bermata biru
berkulit putih; dari namanya sudah menunjukan ia orang Indonesia tapi dari
tulisannya terlihat pendidikan, pengalaman dan caranya melihat masalah
Indonesia seperti dia orang putih dari selatan, sedangkan buku ini
ditulisnya selagi dia bekerja di tanah air. Saya kira rekan-rekan yang
pernah dan sedang belajar di Australia ada baiknya membaca buku ini,
terutama rekan-rekan yang merasa perlu atau terpaksa memperbaiki keadaan
ditanah air kita yang sudah sangat semrawut.
Salam, abrar
A BOOK REVIEW
The Book: "Indonesia A Blueprint For Strategic Survival"
By: Nirwan Idrus
Published by: Centre For Strategic and International Studies
Jakarta
2003
"Indonesia A Blueprint For Strategic Survival" is not just a wake-up call
for all Indonesians, it's the bloody daylight itself screaming, and if
they don't wake up after this, nothing will save Indonesia.
In this book the Australian emeritus professor and former Chief Executive
Officer of IPMI Graduate Schools of Business in Jakarta brings to the fore
not just the little evils besetting Indonesia, but in the words of Salman
Rushdie "the great haramzada" himself.
While neighbours Singapore has arrived as a developed nation on the back
of a long put in place National Plan and Malaysia well on its way to
achieving her Vision 2020 future on the back of a similarly crafted and
implemented Strategic Human Resources Plan, at the turn of the Millennium
Indonesia remained, after 56 years of independence, a backward country
singularly characterized by poverty. It remains, in the author's words
"without a master plan for human resources, without a master plan for
educating its human resources, without a master plan for its population
management, for its busines system practices, for its bureaucracy and
other things that would be considered important in ensuring survival in
the ever harsher environment. In short its future existence is in
question".
To those arrogant Indonesians who do not want to learn from Singapore's
successes and shrugged all comparisons with the City-State with "we're
seventy times bigger than Singapore" Nirwan Idrus pointed out the
irrefutable, "there are countries whose population are about the same as
Singapore which are nowhere near Singapore in terms of their achievements"
and "there are also a lot of countries with the population the size of
Indonesia which are better than Singapore".
There can be no sadder damning indictment to the backwardness of her own
people that President Megawati should go to Singapore for a mere medical
check-up. We don't hear of Australian prime ministers going to the U.K.
for medical check-ups or that of U.K. prime ministers going to the U.S.
for medical check-ups.
The good news is, says Nirwan Idrus, if (and this is a big "if") every one
of Indonesia's 220 million people resolves today to mend his or her ways
then in 100 years we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. But to
get there they will need his blueprint.
In this book he'd sketched out a possible road map in the form of a Human
Resources Plan incorporating Planning and Management plans, all designed
to produce a New Indonesian by the year 2100. The implementation will be a
tall order, but a start has to be made. As if not to leave anything to
chance or fate as Nirwan Idrus would rather call it, there is also
provided a scenario of sectors and factors of influence and a series of
criteria for selecting people responsible for the Indonesia of 2100
project.
Intimately related to the Human Resources Plan will be the Natural
Resources Management Plan for the sustainable management of Indonesian
natural resources, for without it before long "the country has nothing to
sell and will be colonized for ever".
One is reminded of that surrealistic (but closer to the truth than many
Indonesians would wish) account in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel "The
Autumn of The Patriarch"; there wasn't anymore quinine, general, there's
no more cocoa….this country isn't worth a plug nickel except for the
sea….we'll accept it on account for the interests of that debt which is in
excess and which won't be paid off even with a hundred generations…says
the American ambassador in that story.
In a concession to over 50 years of pervasive corruption, Nirwan Idrus
says "natural resources management is not safe in Indonesian hands".
Fortunately for Indonesia technology will help, but only if it can come up
with and implement a Technology Uptake and Application Program. Above all
the blueprint is predicated on Education and Training as the Pillars of
Proper Progress. An Education Master Plan referenced to the Human
Resources Plan has to be a national imperative of the highest priority;
"unless education is sorted out first nothing else will get improved" the
author says.
The author has even provided a Plan to unlearn the bad habits of the last
450 years. There are precisely four steps involved in unlearning "which
must be carefully recognized in order to achieve the objective of learning
new things".
It is unfortunate that for such an important book designed to play a
pivotal role in the genesis of the new Indonesian hominids, the editorial
staff of the Centre For Strategic and International Studies or CSIS had
been less meticulous than they should have been. Thus, for example, we
find "their own for a" rather than "their own fora", "moths" rather than
"months", " anties" rather than "aunties" all stick out as sore thumbs.
Hadisoesatro, who is obviously not a bilingual, should also have taken
steps to allow others more in the know to vet his "Foreword". That way we
won't see Indonesian mind out of synch with proper English usage as
evident when he writes "Djisman S. Simandjuntak, who is heading another
leading business school in Indonesia". These are precisely the care and
dedication-to task attitude that Nirwan Idrus repeatedly returns to as the
essential quality so missing in present day Indonesians. Indonesians are
already almost half a millennium behind the rest of the world, they just
can't afford anymore thumb nail glitches like that. But for now at least
Nirwan Idrus' exhortations ("If only Indonesian leaders read them") must
not fall on deaf ears.
One could almost picture him telling each and every Indonesians;
If your name is Amien Raiss then you should, as a matter of urgency raise
this in both chambers of the Indonesian Parliament; if you are the leader
of a political party you should adopt this blueprint as party political
platform and get people to vote on it at the next election thereby
increasing awareness of the bleak future for the country within the
community; if you are the ITB lecturers cum consultants with a Mercedes
and a BMW in your garage you should return to campus and do some decent
teaching in the final years of your tenure; if you are the owner-driver of
those Bajaj which had not seen the inside of service workshops in years
you should go to your cooperative and see if you can't get those new
LPG-fuelled Bajaj already introduced on Bangladesh roads; if you are one
of the ulamas running the hundreds of Pesantren schools around Indonesia
you should go to your foundation masters and get them to adopt a plan in
which every Pesantren school should have a science laboratory and computer
pod by the end of this decade; if you are a taxi driver or any driver for
that matter, here's the plan- when you see one of your colleagues being
extorted by a policeman at a street corner you should descend en masse and
harangue the policeman on why you shouldn't pay and he shouldn't have
asked for graft- this is not fancy stuff, it's already happening in post
Arap Moi Kenya; if you are one of the few communist party members still
around now is the time for a second go at that revolution. Communism works
for Vietnam and had enabled her to catch up with Indonesia within the
short span of two decades; in short everyone should agitate until such
time as the so-called political elite at the highest levels come to bite
the bullets and adopt and implement the blueprint.
In doing so, "Back To The Future (pick your choice of inspiration Prof.
Stephen B. Hawking or Michael J. Fox) and Starting At The End" would be a
powerful slogan and guidance to have.
Honest Indonesians and those genuinely distressed about the state of the
nation, should shed tears were they to read this book. That would be an
auspicious beginning for, to repent one must first accept there has been a
mistake.
RI
20
June
2003
****
reviewed by Riyadi Idrus
the reviewer holds a MSc from Australia's Monash University, had
published widely including contributions to ASIAWEEK and THE FAR EASTERN
ECONOMIC REVIEW and most recently an expatriate Intellectual Property
Consultant in Jakarta.
RantauNet http://www.rantaunet.com
Isikan data keanggotaan anda di http://www.rantaunet.com/daftar.php
-----------------------------------------------
Berhenti menerima RantauNet Mailing List, silahkan ke:
http://www.rantaunet.com/unsubscribe.php
===============================================
