"Narrowing Disparity Through Innovation and Optimization of Local Resources in Indonesia"

Since the movie came out in 2008, Belitung has become a tourist destination and the income of Belitung has been quadrupled. This case shows how culture, in this case is art, could affect the planning and development of a region. Hilmar Farid, the Director General of Culture in the Ministry of Education and Culture, mentioned that culture needs to be seen as a potential source of income, instead of a cost center. Another example is Heka  Leka, an organisation in Maluku that focus on improvement in education. 

Siwalima(Kebersamaan/Togetherness) is a core value of this organisation, which means accepting the differences as a strength of unity, togetherness, and kinship in life. The optimism of the potential of eastern Indonesia was showed by the Founder and Director of Heka Leka, Stanley Ferdinandus, who mentioned, "Matahari terbit dari timur, dan dari situlah Indonesia akan dibangun" (the sun rises from the east, and from there too Indonesia will be developed).

In narrowing the disparities, the innovations in local governance and development is also a key. According to Prof. Wihana Kirana Jaya, there are two bottlenecks in local governance, which are the mindset and overlapping regulation. 

He also mentioned the needs of incentive in changing the behaviour of people. The needs of a new incentive mechanism was also mentioned by Ward Berenschot from KITLV. He did a research about clientelism (transactional politic) and recommended the electoral reform and incentive re-structure to alleviate transactional politic. A success story in local governance was presented by the representative of State Secretariat of Indonesia, Adyawarman. He explained the case study in Batang about innovation in local governance. The graph above shows the process of how the innovation in local governance can be institutionalised. 

IDF 2018 was closed by Ministers Dialogue. Prof. Bambang P.S. Brodjonegoro explained how the local wisdom can be utilised and capitalised for the development of local governance. He also emphasised the importance of improving the quality of budget in Indonesia through the improvement in planning. In addition, local government needs to be careful in deciding the priority of a region. 

Writer:  Annisa M. (AFOSP Intern 2018 )