Pancasila at Work in Bumi Dipasena

Bumi Dipasena in East Rawajitu district of Tulang Bawang regency, Lampung, can serve as a reference point for the seed of Pancasila values falling on fertile ground.

The region had been turbulent since the opening of a 16,250-hectare shrimp farm in a nucleus estate and smallholder farming scheme (tambak inti rakyat or TIR) in 1988. Nowadays, however, locals are welcoming their future with hope and enthusiasm. Deep wounds from the protracted conflict are slowly healing.

Uncertainty loomed large over more than 6,000 shrimp-farming families in eight villages for decades, as a series of agreements made between local farmers and several big corporates showed no results. Tension peaked in 2011, when an open conflict between farmers and a multinational company led to the destruction of company assets and a complete rejection of all external business entities offering “nucleus estate” schemes.

Tension remained high until the opening of a new chapter in October 2017. All parties agreed to bury the hatchet, let the past be the past and turn the page: eliminating co-dependence, fostering a free and equal relationship, annulling all legal cases, settling all debts and distributing land certificates to farmers. The new treaty was born out of the learned experience that without unity, honesty and justice, the people will always suffer.

Mutual assistance

Weariness from bearing the burden of protracted conflict and suffering led to grassroot initiatives. The Bumi Dipasena Cooperative was revitalized by prioritizing principles of gotong royong (mutual assistance) and independence. Shrimp is a high-risk commodity, with harvests often failing due to diseases. It is highly sensitive to environmental changes, and prices often fluctuate. On the other hand, a successful harvest can bring plenty of profit and international market prices remain high. In the previous era, harvest failures meant piles of debt as costs for seeds, feed and other expenses were covered by the nucleus estates and considered working capital loans.

Through the cooperative, debts from harvest failures are nullified. Farmers with successful harvests provide a portion of their yield to other farmers suffering failure to ensure sustainable cultivation. Under the yield-sharing scheme, 80 percent of the yield is for farmers and 20 percent is for a savings and risk reserve. This is a concrete manifestation of the mutual assistance principle. Apart from helping farmers who suffer from harvest failure, the 20 percent allocation is also used to maintain infrastructure of the aquaculture farms.

As worries over piling debt and unilateral pricing schemes dissipate, farmers’ cultivation spirit grows. All of this is done without negating the role of corporates. All big corporates supplying seeds, feed and medicines as well as buyers are permitted to enter the local market in healthy competition with one another, with prices determined and monitored by the cooperative to prevent losses for farmers.

Despite significant progress, shrimp cultivation in Bumi Dipasena still uses traditional techniques, as reflected in the low productivity: On average, the harvest yield is less than 500 kilograms of shrimp per 2,000-square-meter farm. Multiple factors affect the availability of infrastructures. A 61-kilometer national road leading to the Bumi Dipasena shrimp farms from the Trans-Sumatra road is heavily damaged. Motorists need between three and four hours to traverse the entire road. There is no electricity, and farmers must buy 45,000 liters of diesel fuel every day for the portable generator that powers the farms’ paddle wheel aerators. The lack of electricity also makes it difficult for the cooperative to build a cold storage and processing facility.

The central government must become involved to develop the world’s best shrimp cultivation region into a national shrimp production center. The central government must accelerate its export of fishery products and highlight Bumi Dipasena as a success story in people-based economic development. Lampung, and especially Bumi Dipasena, is a center for shrimp production and cultivation. It contributes around 20 percent to national shrimp exports.

Dramatic change

Bumi Dipasena’s history can serve as a miniature portrait of the failure to foster collaboration between locals and big businesses under the TIR scheme. Similar failures in nucleus estate and smallholder schemes are commonplace in plantation and cattle farming. Idealism in the “symbiotic mutualism” concept collapses in the implementation, as businesses tend to be hegemonic in penetrating local markets and no fair “umpires” exist to ensure balanced and equal yields and benefits in the cooperation.

Prior to 1988, East Rawajitu was a swampy forest filled with wild creatures. The uninhabited region sits at the meeting point of two big rivers: the Mesuji and the Tulang Bawang. The opening of a massive shrimp farm attracted people from regions across the archipelago. Ethnic and cultural heterogeneity created a mosaic united by the sense of a shared struggle and fate. Local success in fostering diversity and a strong fighting spirit serves as the foundation that led Bumi Dipasena out of misery.

Unity among locals in demanding their rights mediation provides lessons on local strength and wisdom that are often missing from the design and implementation of regional and national policies. Experiments a la Bumi Dipasena should not only inspire socio-economic conflict resolution, but also serve as a model for implementing Pancasila values in resolving conflicts between locals and companies in many regions. Early on in the development of “plasma-nucleus” programs in plantations, farming and aquaculture in the early 1980s, the ultimate goal was the creation of a production pattern and production asset control with the composition of 80 percent for the plasma, or smallholders, and 20 percent for the nucleus, or the cooperation. The nucleus would purchase plasma’s production yields at sensible prices and the work contract was built on principles of equality and justice.

The programs have left behind not only a hard lessons but also a structure opposed to the intended effect: a decrease of community-based businesses and the ballooning of asset and production concentration in corporates. Emerging conflicts have slowly but surely and completely transformed local business structures. This is proof of prolonged neglect by the state. Socioeconomic gaps can be traced back to these dramatic and fundamental changes. They did not spring up out of the blue.

The cries of poultry and cattle farmers, aquaculture farmers, fishermen, rubber and oil palm farmers, who lack protection in such an unfair cooperation pattern and business structure, have still not been answered. In such a relationship, founding father Mohammad Hatta’s criticism becomes relevant once more: “We wish for good things for our people, but what we get is the opposite. This shows poor understanding of problems and weak character of those in power.” (Bung Hatta: A Political Biography, Deliar Noor, LP3ES, 1990). A people-based economy, in Hatta’s view, requires decision-making that ensures growth, progress and sustainability of the people’s economy. Efforts to achieve this are conducted through the comprehensive empowerment of social and economic institutions, so that they have a strong bargaining position.

Policymakers, intellectuals and representatives must thoroughly reread President Soekarno’s celebrated defense speech “Indonesia Accuses”, which he delivered at a colonial court in Bandung in 1930, and Hatta’s defense speech “Indonesia Vrij” (Indonesia Free) at a court in The Hague in 1928. Both were bright young men of their era, and both talked extensively about the destruction of people’s socio-economic foundation for the sake of power and capital. The struggle for independence was meant to eliminate such structural exploitation and unite the people to grant their right as a free, advanced and sovereign nation. It was not without reason that Soekarno always reminded his fellow Indonesians that imperialism and neocolonialism were the nation’s real enemies.

Suwidi Tomo, “Becoming Indonesia” Forum Coordinator