Emigration as a solution to population problems
is indeed a slender reed in which to seek support.
v.d. Kroeff.
Transmigration as a measure to relieve population-pressure.
Transmigration dates from the beginning of this century, when the government of that time gave attention for the first time to the possibility of removing inhabitants from densely populated Java to the other islands with a much lower density of population.
By transmigration in this connection is meant the transportation of persons or groups of persons from Java to the other islands of the Indonesian archipelago, mainly Sumatera, Sulawesi and Kalimantan, with the intention that these transmigrants will settle as peasants in the settlements established for that purpose. This transmigration took place in the period 1905-1941 as well as in the period 1950-1958 after independence was gained under the responsibility of the government. Its practical execution was entrusted to special government instances. Without this initiative of the government probably little thought would be given to a transmigration of Javanese, who are so strongly tied to their desa-environment in which they have been born and have grown up and in the social pattern of which they feel so completely at home.
In 1905 the first Javanese, coming from Kedu, were transported to the island of Sumatera in this framework of the population policy of the day, and settled in Gedong Tataän. From the side of the government much financial support was given for transportation, first cost of living in the period until the first harvest, acquisition of cattle and agricultural implements, and for the building of houses. By the end of the year 1910 in this agriculturalcolony Gedong Tataän almost 5,000 transmigrants were living, who had cost the public treasury 150 Dutch guiders per person. A colonisation-experiment, which had been started in 1909 in Kepahiang in Bengkuhi, did not proceed as favourably as the one in Gedong Tataän. Unfavourable health-conditions and insufficient preparation for the construction of irrigation works appeared to produce difficulties. The transmigration proved to be very expensive if executed with the method then employed. Nor was the expectation realised, that a spontaneous transmigration would ensue to these regions at the people’s own expenses. On the contrary, several colonists, who thought the work in the clearings too heavy, went away from the transmigration-colony and went to work on the agricultural estates.
After 1911 the financial support for the transmigrants by the government became restricted. The colony growed but slowly. In 1921 a second colonization was established in the neighbourhood of Kota Agung, also in southern Sumatera. At the end of 1927 in these two transmigrant-colonies 24,300 persons in total were living, who per head cost the country 144 Dutch guilders. The development of the transmigration was not satisfactory and very expensive.
In 1930 and 1931 two more transmigrant-colonies were established in Bengkuhi to which a few hundreds of persons were transported, who had lost their houses and their fields by the explosions of the Merapi.
In addition to the transmigration conducted by the government there was another circumstance which took many inhabitants of Java to other islands. On the agricultural estates founded with foreign capital, especially on the Eastcoast of Sumatera, there was a shortage of field-labourers. These could not be drawn from the local population. As far back as 1872 an enrolment had been taking place of Javanese labourers for these estates. At the census of 1920 it appeared that 613,763 persons from Java lived in the other islands, 520,559 of whom were of Javanese race, 84,255 were Sundaneses, 6,241 Madurese, and some small numbers of other little population groups. Among them there were tens of thousands of estate-labourers. The number of transmigrants in 1920 did not amount to 20,000 so that the effect of the opportunity for work on the estates was of much greater consequence in this period for the departure of Javanese than the transmigration.
At the 1930 census it appeared that 1,092,081 persons from Java in total lived in the other islands. Of these 943,994 were of the Javanese racial group. On the estates on the Eastcoast of Sumatera 320,502 labourers from Java were employed at the end of 1929. This opportunity for work on the estates for these Javanese workers did not mean that they all settled permanently in Sumatera. Many returned to Java on expiry of their contract. In the period after 1930 the great influence was evident which the economical world depression, begun in 1929, had on the estates in Sumatera. The prices of exported products fell and great numbers of labourers were dismissed. Many tens of thousands of labourers went back to Java in the years after 1930. In this period also the government had fewer financial resources at its disposition for the financing of a possible further transmigration, which had proved to be so expensive.
Since 1932 it was proved that transmigration might also be realized in a less expensive way. It appeared that already settled colonists were ready at harvest-time to give hospitality to new transmigrants and to give them a share in their rice-crops, if the newly-arrived would lend the necessary help during the harvest period. A limited experiment in 1928 proved to be successful. During an ample 4 months 1,693 persons were transported, who cost the government only 15 Dutch guilders per head. The system, which was developed on this principle, turned out to give an opportunity to more than 240,000 transmigrants in the period of 1932 – 1941 to settle in agricultural colonies, which were situated for the greater part in Sumatera and only for a small part in the island of Sulawesi. In a period, in which expenses of political economy had to be greatly reduced and in which many labourers returned to Java, it was evident that the transmigration was exceptionally successful, when compared with the preceding period of 1905-1930.
The number of transmigrants, who were transported within the framework of the transmigration project during the period up from the beginning of transmigration in 1905 until the invasion of the Japanese army in 1942, amounted to approximately 270,000 persons. In this period of 36 years the number of inhabitants of the island of Java had mounted from 30 million to 48 million, so that the number of transmigrants agrees with 1 1/3% of the estimated population growth in this period.
After independence was obtained the government of the Republic of Indonesia took the transmigration in had again in the year 1950. The same intention and execution of it was retained. For the relief of population pressure and to raise the standard of living of the Javanese population in Java and in the transmigrant colonies transmigration was recommenced. In the period 1950-1957 154,116 persons in total were transported from Java and Madura to the other islands of the republic. The distribution over the different islands was as follows, transported were:
- 127,140 persons to South Sumatera,
- 8,613 persons to South North and Central Sumatera,
- 12,691 persons to South Kalimantan
- 4,852 persons to South Sulawesi, and
- 847 persons to South Maluku.
From 1950 up to and inclusive 1953 the number of transmigrants showed a great annual rise, the greatest year-figure was 39,427 in 1953. In the years afterwards this went down to amply 20,000 a year. After the year 1957 possibilities for transmigration became very small indeed. The inter insular connections became much more infrequent. Also the insecurity in the islands outside Java and the falling-off of the involved authorities’ monetary resources were to be blamed for it.
In the period 1950-1957 the population of Java grew from 49.5 millions to 55 millions. The transmigrants, who left the island of Java in this period, agree in number with about 2.5% of the estimated population-increase in this period.
For the region of the D.I. Jogjakarta we would mention the data regarding the period after 1950 below: table XIV-1.
Of the 23,106 persons who went away from this region 93.4% went to south sumatera; 1.1% to Central Sumatera; 4.7% went to Kalimantan and 0.5% went to South Sulawesi. In this decade the number of inhabitants of the D.I. Jogjakarta increased from 1.8 millions to 2.1 millions.
The number of transmigrants agrees with about 7% of the population increase in this decade.
The significance of the transmigration for the population problem in Java is not convincing, if judged from these figures. The number of persons, who left the island of Java in the framework of the government-transmigration plan, is so small that it hardly had any significance for the alleviation of the population pressure.
The demographic situation, which had developed in Java, was a motive to settle in the other islands for only small numbers of inhabitants of Java. The population growth of a desa in Java does not create a problem, until the number of villagers has outgrown the means of subsistence, obtained from the arable fields of the village. Java is a region where the population problems develop under circumstances, in which the law of Malthus comes into force. (v.d.Leeden).
(viz. 1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence.
2. Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increases,
unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks).
The population lives in a closed area with a chiefly one-sided economic structure. The agriculture, which serves for the people’s own subsistence, is still practised according to a traditionally fixed production-system. An economic development sprung from the initiative of the Javanese population, in another direction than food-production, has hardly taken place.
Even where in the past sufficient arable grounds were available and were within reach for exploitation, this circumstance was no inducement leading to an increase of the productivity per head and to a raised prosperity. As soon as the arable grounds belonging to the desa no longer produced sufficient means of subsistence for the growing desa population, and, when for a number of villagers, even the minimum of livelihood seemed no longer assured, only then was there a motive for them to proceed to the severance of many ties that bound them to the desa, where they had been born. Only then they were able to give up their places in the so tightly bound social community and to go in search of another place where new arable grounds could assure them a livelihood.
Daughter-desas were formed and in the old desa population-pressure was alleviated, however only till the increase of the population, that had stayed behind, had again led to a heightened tension between the number of villagers and the available means of subsistence.
As with the Javanese population social requirements explicity prevail over economic, distress must have risen very high before such radical decision, as the abandonment of one’s desa and place was indeed, were taken. Prosperity, according to the norms of the Javanese standard of life, encompasses the whole social life. “the measure to which the pursued form of society, that is considered ideal according to their own tradition, has been realized, decides the level of the attained prosperity”. (van der Leeden, 1952, pag.60). A characteristic of the Javanese style of life was the renouncement of economic wants, that were deemed to be of secondary interest to a very low level of requirements, in order to be able to hold a fitting place in society. As long as the minimum of subsistence was still assured. There was no motive to leave the village community. This entailed, that the standard of life moved on a very low level, while the population-in crease continually inclined to an expansion, that would be greater than the available food would permit. The population-increase did not lead to a development of unused possibilities, in order to come to an increase of the prosperity, for instance by growing crops for foreign markets or by applying oneself to crafts, industry, traffic or fishery. The pattern of food-growing for self-supply remained intact. As the arable grounds in Java have their limits, it was necessary that the process of formation of daughter-desas at last must come to an end. The increasing population -pressure in the desa, which could be alleviated as long as there were still waste grounds to be reclaimed, now leads to the problem of an always further increase. The surplus population in Java develops. According to the useful formulation of the conception of overpopulation, meant for the description of the demographic situation in the island of Java in the year 1952, as given by van der Leeden, there is a situation of overpopulation: “when, with a comparatively small margin between the minimum of subsistence and the standard of living reached, the production in an area can no longer provide for the wants of the growing population, while this standard of living is not abandoned and thus the already small margin is unfavourably narrowed”.
The overpopulation of the island of Java is evident in different ways, among others in the high figures of the number of people living on 1 ha. Of arable land and on 1 square kilometre of the island, while at the same time as symptoms of this process must be seen the falling standard of living and the decrease of average landed property. In 1922 average landed property per land rent payer was 1.15 ha. In 1930 it was 0.99 ha. In 1940 average landed property feel back still further to 0.84 ha. That with such a small average landed property there can be no prosperous peasantry, may be deduced from these figures. In 1952 rice-growing areas Sleman and Rantul: 0.5-0.7 ha., while in the less fertile areas Kulon Progo and Gunung Kidul this was 0.8 and 1.3 ha. Respectively. The data respecting the whole of the island of Java were not available to me.
The growth of the towns, which is partly due to the fact that many people, who can no longer find a livelihood in their own desa and in the agricultural field, try their luck in town, finds its cause partly in the population surplus in the country. The deterioration of the quality of the people’s diet, which was already evident during the decade preceding the second world war, is also a consequence can be stated a decrease of the protein-rich grains (rice, maize) and an increase of the root-crops poor in protein (cassave, sweet potatoes). This process results in an impoverishment of the people’s diet. Whether for the Javanese population as a whole sufficient calories per day are available. I could not verify, but for the D.I. Jogjakarta this was not the case.
The high mortality rate among the infants and toddlers should be seen in this connection as a corrective course of things on a too great increase of the population-pressure, when the population-growth inclines to rise above the limit put by the available means of subsistence on the spot, this inevitable correction appears. With a consistent social-economic structure of Javanese society, the unlimited inclination towards population growth will, ever more frequently and to an ever higher degree, call up this phenomenon of a high child mortality until a population equilibrium will have established it self.
Will transmigration be able to bring about a permanent alleviation of the population pressure?
Now that the island of Java may be considered as to be quite filled up, because overpopulation is no longer a local phenomenon, but has spread over the surface of the whole island, the common way of reacting of the Javanese people towards this problem is no longer useful. The once available waste grounds are in use now. The result has been, that nowadays a much greater amount of persons lives on the same low level of subsistence, with only a small margin between the minimum of living and the actual standard of living, than was the case in former times. The prosperity, that is the degree to which every member of the population could dispose of goods and services, did not increase. The activities of the government authorities, who were responsible for transmigration, functioned as the bridge to transmit the growing process, in the same style, with the same limitations and on-sidedness of its economy of produce and with the same impotency to cause the production to increase per head, from Java to the other islands of Indonesia, and mainly to Sumatera. The structure of the transmigration-colonies was set up with the Javanese desa as a pattern – as much as possible keeping together transmigrants from the same desa. There again agriculture was practised for the self-supply of the transmigrant families. Preferably areas were chosen for exploration, where there were favourable possibilities for irrigation, to be able to go on to practise wet rice-cultivation. The institute of the “lurah desa”-function, the ancient adat and the fruits of their own culture (type of housing, wajang, method of harvesting) came along with the transmigrants. True, the adat-principle of mutual help made it possible for great numbers of transmigrants to be transported to the established colonies during harvest-time, in a period of unfavourable development in the whole country. On the other hand the conservation of Javanese society-structure with all its characteristics is for the new transmigrants indeed very attractive, but it is the cause that “at the same time the conditions for the same difficulties with which people had to struggle in Java, are automatically transported with the people across the water”. (v.d.Leeden).
After the beginning the kernels of colonization are comparatively rapidly filled by means of the arrival of new transmigrants, so that after some time all arable land belonging to the kernel-settlement has been taken into use to its full capacity, and the possibilities for further development have become small already.
The phenomenon of local overpopulation, which is so well known in Java, now also presents itself in the transmigration areas. A surplus of foodstuffs that may be taken to market, no longer occurs. The original, much higher, prosperity-level, which the colonists enjoyed in contrast with the prosperity-level they lived on before their departure from Java, can no longer be maintained at the height attained. Expansion of the arable grounds is not possible any more around the colony and the number of inhabitants increases; initially mostly through new transmigrants, afterwards through natural increase. The average landed property gradually recedes.
For the preservation of the acquired prosperity, part of the next generation are cast upon newly to be opened up transmigration areas. After the available areas have been taken into use for exploitation in the framework of the transmigration plan, the outcome will be, that the problem of Java has spread over a greater surface; a tightly crowded population living on a level of prosperity conform with the present level of Java, with too little landed property and looking for an outlet to get out of the difficulties.
The island of Sumatera, which up till now has taken in the greatest number of transmigration, from an agrarian point of view is a much less fertile island than Java. While in Java the ground has been fertilized for the greater part by the influence of the young volcanoes, in Sumatera this is the case only in some areas: in the southern part of the Lampongs, the Highlands on the border of Palembang, the Pandang Highlands and the Batak country. The other areas are much less fertile (Mohr 1945, Higgins 1954).
The great difference between population density in Java and in the other islands of the Indonesian republic, has existed for a long time and some factors which are of importance for the explanation of this phenomenon are mentioned by Niermeyer and Mohr. The first drew attention to the difference in rainfall and the alternations of monsoons. In Java and Bali there is a clear alternation of dry and wet monsoon, while in the other islands rainfall is practically uninterruptedly very high and the dry monsoon is of little importance. This excessive and uninterrupted rainfall has a very harmful influence on the tropical soil. (Mohr). The soil of Sumater and Kalimantan is with a few exceptions, very old and damaged by erosion, while the soil in many regions of Java is a very fertile soil because there are so many active vulcanoes. These two factors: rainfall and fertility of the soil, were and are still of importance to explain the great difference in population density in Java and Sumatera.
The colonies of transmigrants are mainly situated in the best parts of the island of Sumatera, so that a further development will be restricted to less fertile areas, which however cannot be in an unlimited measure at the disposition of the transmigration authorities.
Judging from a publication of the Ministry of Social Affairs R.I. 1954, the expectation of the results of transmigration is still very highly strung. The responsibility for execution and development of the transmigration has on the 5th of July 1958 been delegated by the Ministry of Social Affairs to the Minister of State, who especially has responsibility for the execution of the government program in the matter of transmigration. On July 10th 1959 the transmigration service was delegated to the Ministry of Reconstruction.
The published plans on the matter of transmigration in the future indicate a government policy of raising the transmigration to a much higher capacity. The plan for the decade 1959-1968 comprises the intention to transport a number of 11 million persons from Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok to the other islands of Indonesia starting in 1959 with 100,000 persons and finishing up with 1.9 million persons per year in 1968. it begins with an annual number, which has not ever been reached per year in the whole history of transmigration. The object in view of the responsible authorities for such a strongly quantitative expansion is the following (Soerjodibroto, 1959):
- A rise of prosperity for the whole people, by reclaiming new arable grounds as well as by building up other means of production;
- A decrease of population-pressure in Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok;
- A strengthening of the unity among the many different population-groups in Indonesia.
How far such a quantitative raising of the number of transmigrants in the next decade will promote the prosperity growth in the whole of Indonesia in that decade, is not clear, in view of the experience with the transmigration in the period of 1905-1958, nor is it clear how this system, which has never yet led to a greater production per head. Will do so in the next decade.
The realization of hope that the population in Java will decrease by means of such an expansion of transmigration, will depend on the question whether it will be possible annually to transport a number of many hundreds of thousands of transmigrants during an unlimited time from Java to the other islands of the country chosen for this purpose.
As every alleviation of local population-pressure in the past as a rule led to a rapid population increase, such and extensive transmigration will be necessary as long as this phenomenon lasts. In view of availability of arable grounds in the other islands, this is of course not possible for an unlimited time.
The supposition that the transmigration authorities will be able to handle such big numbers, suggests – in view of the experiences in the past years – that perhaps there exists some underestimation of the difficult problems in the fields of organization, technique and finance, which will have to be solved. The question, whether indeed so many persons will be ready to be transmigrated on a voluntary basis, is still unanswered.
The building up of industries in the transmigration areas to improve the possibilities for increasing the capacity. As was mentioned already in the plans about 1950, has not been greatly realized during the past decade, and there is every appearance that the unfavourable circumstances, under which an eventual industry now will have to be established, are not better than a decade ago.
The transmigrant colonies in the past did not seem inclined to be taken up into the community of the local population. As in great enclaves the Javanese transmigrants continued to live in their own world. There was hardly any question of a supple coöperation among the different population groups. How far such a structure, in which different groups of the population live in the same territory, can add to intensification of the national unity, can hardly be answered in a favourable sense. The local population will not be able to receive with much enthousiasm such an enormous number of transmigrants as has been announced by the government project. It is possible that the grounds which in the future, but for the presence of transmigrants, would become available for the growth of the local population, will be in the near future used for the settlement of transmigrants. The increase of the population in the islands of Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi appeared to show a greater annual increase during the period 1920-1930 than the population of Java. The annual increase was 3% and 1.6% respectively. Without transmigration the waste lands of these islands will be gradually reclaimed by the local population. Putting into use, in ever greater measure, areas in the other is lands outside Java, will also withdraw areas which are in use by the local population for their ladang-culture, from this way of farming. This will ask from the local population much adaptation in the way in which they carry on their agriculture now. The reaction of the local population proved for the execution of the transmigration not to be very favourable.
In 1954 the People’s council of south Lampong, in resolution sent to the central government requested to limit the number of transmigrants.
In 1958 a similar request came from the local government of East Kalimantan,
In 1956 the Banteng council in the region of Sumatera’s Westcoast (Minangkabau) refused further transmigrant shipments. Such a mass expansion of the capacity of transmigration will lead – if a real assimilation among the population-groups concerned should take place – to the reinforcement of only the Javanese element to the cost of the characteristics of the local smaller population groups.
From the data of the local government of the D.I. Jogjakarta it appears, that transmigration is partly used in the service of social institutions.
A number of persons, who could no longer maintain their position in Javanese society, and who were for their living in the charge of social institutions, were removed from Java by means of transmigration. In the course of the period 1953-1957 a number of 232 persons were transmigrated in the framework of “poor-relief”. A similar practice in future may prove to be negative propaganda and lend an aspect of “exile” to the transmigration, which is certainly not the intention of the authorities concerned.
A policy that wants to serve national unity seems more to be thrown upon other resources for the solution of the Javanese population problem, than for this purpose to lay an uninterrupted claim upon the grounds of other islands, upon great amounts of government money and ever further to shift political relations between the transmigrants and population groups in the other islands, who judge the effect of transmigration also as a factor of power, which influences these relations. A policy which makes use of transmigration only in a modest degree, will raise less resistance from the receiving islands.
The importance, which to our thinking transmigration might have for prosperity increase in Java, can not be found in an uninterrupted transportation of persons who practise agriculture for self-supply. If a solution can be found for the population-problem in Java, then it would be possible to reclaim the grounds, which are still available for development in the other islands, for a modern mechanized agriculture, for output of products, for sale in the world-market or in the national market. To this end for a certain land-area fewer workers would be wanted than is the case now under the transmigration system. The surplus, that remains after deduction for local consumption, can be taken to market. Whether, for an agriculture in modern style, preferably Javanese might be used is certainly not self-evident. With a businesslike exploitation the race will be much less important than the fitness for such labour . The establishment and exploitation of agrarian concerns, which are meant to yield agrarian products as efficiently as possible, is quite foreign to the Javanese peasant. The answer to the question how far it will be possible to form agrarian entrepreneurs out of Javanese farmers, will determine in what degree Javanese farmers will be able to take part in agrarian projects in the other islands. For this it will be necessary to loosen the social ties, such as bind the Javanese villagers to their desas. The products will in future have to be valued according to their commercial value and no longer according to their utility for the support of the farmer’s own family. This will necessitate the new agrarian entrepreneurs to build up another social system than the one they are accustomed to, no longer based on a goods-economy but on a money-economy. For the present form of organization in which the transmigration takes and took place this will mean, that it will have to be done away with, and that the recruting of the farmers will have to be oriented upon other criteria than upon Javanese race and experience in sawah-ricecultivation. It means that the possibilities for increase of production, lying in the grounds that have not yet been cultivated, and which may be used for the increase of national prosperity, can be better untilized within the framework of a co-ordinated plan, in which have been integrated a curbing of the population increase as well as improvements in the possibilities for agrarian trade and industrial development.
In such a plan the significance of transmigration to our thinking is only temporary and inconsiderable. The real cause of the existing overpopulation in Java lies deeper, than that a symptomatic fighting of it could be of great effect.