Indonesia’s economic census is meant to produce a snapshot of the nation, but distrust of officials and fears about privacy may blur the picture.
The Indonesian government is trying to collect and analyse data from 288 million people, many of whom are reluctant to help the Central Statistics Bureau and its 18,000 staff know about their lives.
Although there are laws to protect privacy, the word on the street is that officials can’t be trusted to keep secrets. Confidentiality should be a certainty, but it’s often treated as an option, not a compulsion.
In Indonesia, an individual’s choice of one of six religious faiths approved by the government is stamped on their ID card with a photo. This gets used for almost all transactions with government agencies, plus a raft of private outfits like banks and hotels that keep photocopies of the plastic.
This approved intrusion almost happened in Australia. In 1985, PM Bob Hawke proposed an ID system he called the ‘Australia Card’, allegedly to stamp out welfare fraud and tax evasion. Renamed the ‘Snoop Card’, the idea was sunk by public outcries and a Senate that harkened to the noise.
Little has changed in the past four decades. In 2023, a government report showed that:
- just under half of Australians surveyed told us they were affected by a data breach in the previous year, and three-quarters experienced harm as a result.
- The advent of technologies like artificial intelligence and facial recognition has introduced the potential for new privacy risks, some that deeply intersect with our human rights.
- While AI has the potential to provide major economic benefits, we know Australians are cautious about the use of AI to make decisions that might affect them, and there are low levels of comfort in the use of the technology.
Likewise in the nation next door. However, the ID card system introduced in 1945 is now so deeply entrenched, there’s little opponents can do other than buy counterfeit cards.
To avoid the nosy Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) census officials scribbling notes, snapping cellphones and tapping tablets, it’s best to be elsewhere when neighbours sound the alert – but if trapped give any answer that appeals. In Indonesia, truth isn’t always the best policy.
Scraping together what stats can be gleaned from Indonesian hospitals, it’s reckoned that roughly every hour about 500 babies arrive (that’s 4.5 million a year) and 240 oldies depart – that’s 2.1 million annually. Subtract one from the other to get a growth rate that should concern planners in every department, from housing to education and traffic control and having public servants wrestle with the key political question: where’s the money going to come from?
This is why the economic census is so important.
Last century, the national government got worried about a population expansion, so it started promoting contraception, using the campaign slogan dua anak cukup – two kids are enough.
The UN Population Fund started working with Indonesia in 1972.
In the flood of billboard images and even statues pushing the need for less nookie and more celibacy, the eldest child is usually a boy.
It seemed to work because big families are now rare, but that could be the result of women’s emancipation, dumping stove-and-sink housewifery in favour of a profession and financial independence.
In the early 1970s the total fertility rate was about 5.6 children per woman. By the late 1990s, this had dropped to 2.6 births. These figures are largely authentic because the sources were obstetricians and midwives who had to file logs of their work to get paid.
Before women could get married, they had to prove they’d had a Depo-Provera contraceptive injection, which was free. More inequality: men didn’t have to show they had a wallet full of condoms and a standing order with the local pharmacy.
Naturally the rules didn’t apply to the rulers who had their own slogan – ‘don’t do what I do – do what I say’.
President Soeharto rarely wore rubbers because he fathered six nippers with missus Siti Hartinah aka Ibu Tien. She got her tag by diverting ten per cent of all government contracts into her handbag, ensuring the Republic’s First Family created Asia’s greatest kleptocracy.
A joint report by Transparency International and the UN estimated that between $15 billion and $35 billion was embezzled during Soeharto’s 32-year Orde Baru (New Order) rule.
Indonesia’s fifth president Megawati Soekarnoputri, a daughter of first President Soekarno who had 14 kids from his known nine wives, didn’t help the credibility of official data by reportedly saying that statistical surveys are “only a guide and not a definitive rule”.
She has also criticised official data on poverty and economic inequality as being “unreliable” for not recording the truth about the poor.
Later this year, Jakarta will release a mass of figures that they’ll call ‘a snapshot of the nation’.
If that is to be used to illustrate this extraordinary country, the data should be blurred like the police photos used to show victims of brutality and not distress viewers.
We don’t want to be upset by reading about the wealth and habits of neighbours who seem to have more of what we want and they don’t need, so best bin the data – which will happen anyway.
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia.
Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.