Jakarta (informal) part 2
March 7, 2008 — tbelfield
Photo by Qusing
Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Greek for oikos (house) and nomos (custom or law), hence “rules of the house(hold).” …> go to site
Economics at its most basic might be thought of as the ways in which we make a living. The economy can also be described in terms of the relationships between supply and demand.
The rules of the household (a few examples)
Begging
One evening while taking the new communter train from Jakarta to Depok with my friend Budi I noticed a man several cars down crawling along the floor of the train carriage. He would stop occasionally and collect a few coins or rupiah form the commuters. Others ignorded him. As he approached where we were sitting I reached into my pocket for the stack of coins which I had been accumulating through the day. He held out his hand and I gave him the coins. Budi did nothing. The man moved on. Budi then told me, “Maybe if you follow him home you will see what a nice house he lives in“. I took this to mean that the man was either faking his disability or he was some sort of professional beggar working his audience. Shortly after that the train made a stop and a young blind man with his mother walked on board. He had strapped on his back a small portable karioki machine and proceeded to sing into his microphone with a very good voice. At this Budi reached into his pocket and handed over his coins. Budi could tell the difference. I could not. It is still hard to this day.
There are an estimated 200,000 street vendors in Jakarta each month they pay out about $1.5 billion rupiah for protection, in extortion, or for illegal fees. There are perhaps 80,000 street kids who make their living by begging.
In Spetmeber 2007, the Jakarta City Council approved a bylaw that bans busking, begging and street hawking as well as banning people from giving money to beggars, vendors and hawkers.
Initiated by the city’s departing governor, Sutioyoso, the bylaw says that anyone who is caught giving money to beggars, and others of their ilk, will be fined of 50 million rupiah.From World Street Children News …>go to site
Mohammad Yazid, Jakarta
“A beggar recently scolded my wife for refusing to give him some money at a busy intersection in Cempaka Putih (famously known as Coca-Cola intersection), Central Jakarta.
“How stingy, so what’s the headscarf for?” he said to my wife. I told my wife not to roll down the car window because I was afraid he was a crook.
Bluffing and smirking have become forms of pressure exerted by beggars operating at nearly every crossroad in Jakarta.
They employ various other methods at other places such as public transportation and residential areas. Some use the conventional style of pretending to be starving or seriously ill, while others apply the criminal way of extorting money from passengers by appearing as alcoholics or newly released convicts.
Women have an effective trick of approaching benevolent people and exploiting the innocent looks of children under the age of five and carrying “hired infants” at Jakarta intersections.
There is no official data on the total number of beggars in Jakarta, but according to Suciardi, head of the commercial sex rehabilitation service at the Jakarta Social Welfare Office, their numbers increase by 40 percent during Ramadhan through Idul Fitri, from the 2,295 normally found in the city.
Chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection, Seto Mulyadi, said the number of street children in Greater Jakarta reached 80,000.
Amid the prevailing economic difficulties and different mishaps affecting Indonesia, many people choose begging as their profession, because they often make more than those who work at government offices or private businesses. Earning about Rp 50,000 to Rp 75,000 daily on average, in a month a beggar can make Rp 1.5 million, far more than Jakarta’s minimum wage of Rp 900,000″.
Black Markets
Begging, of course, is small change compared to Jakarta’s black markets. Havoscope Global Black Market Indexes lists the market value of Indonesia’s black market at $3.32 billion (US). The counterfeit goods market value (books, cable, music, movies, and computer software) is listed at $458 million (US). Black market handphone sales may be as high as $370 million (US). The value of the illegal drug trade is not listed but may also be in the millions of dollars as is indicated by the recent incident of 600,000 ecstasy pills seized from a shop-house in Cengkareng, Tangerang district, Banten province, last February 26.
Human Trafficking
“Indonesia is primarily a source, but also a transit and destination country for human trafficking. UNICEF estimates that 100,000 women and children are trafficked annually for commercial sexual exploitation in Indonesia and abroad, 30 percent of the female prostitutes in Indonesia are below 18, and 40,000-70,000 Indonesian children are victims of sexual exploitation. The East Java Children’s Protection Agency estimates that at least 100,000 women and children are trafficked annually from, through, and to East Java.
Indonesian women and children are trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Middle East. A significant number of Indonesian women voluntarily migrate to work as domestic servants but are later coerced into abusive conditions. Some Indonesian women are recruited by false promises of employment and are later coerced into prostitution or forced labor. Ethnic Chinese women and teenage girls in the West Kalimantan district are recruited as mail-order brides for men in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Indonesian women from the Riau Islands, Bali, and Lombok are used for sex tourists from Malaysia and Singapore”.
from Fact book on Global Sexual Exploitation - Indonesia
“A 1992 survey showed that one out of 10 prostituted persons was under age 17, and that one out of five of those older than that age said they took up prostitution before they reached 17. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998
The sex industry accounts for an estimated 1.2 billion dollars to 3.3 billion dollars in annual earnings, or between 0.8 and 2.4% of the country’s GDP, the study said. In Jakarta alone, prostitution-related activities are estimated to be worth 91 million dollars annually. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998
There are between 140,000 and 230,000 prostituted persons in Indonesia (1993-1994 estimates). Prostituted persons are mainly adult women, but there are also male, transvestite and child prostitutes, both girls and boys. International Labor Organization. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998
There are at least 650,000 prostitutes in Indonesia. In 1998 there were 150,000 registered prostitutes compared to 72,000 in 1995. 30 percent are children. (Yogyakarta Free Children Society, Mohammad Farid, “Indonesian economic crisis boosts prostitution,” Reuters, 26 July 1998
There were 65,582 registered prostitutes in 1994. The highest estimate is 500,000 women in prostitution. CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific
About 200 prostituted women in Jakarta, Indonesia, protesting plans by the mayor to close down their complex carried signs stating “I did not want to become a prostitute. The economic difficulties have made me a prostitute.” “Indonesian prostitutes join wave of protests,” Reuters, 2 July 1998
Earnings from prostitution average $600 a month in Indonesia and are higher than in other unskilled jobs. International Labor Organization, Elif Kaban, “UN labour body urges recognition of sex industry,” Reuters, 18 August 1998
Particularly because of the economic crises in Asia, women in Thailand and Indonesia are increasingly forced into prostitution as the only means of survival. “Women Workers Are Last in, First Out,” Associated Press, 30 April 1998
In Indonesia the economic crisis has driven thousands of women into prostitution for economic survival. Although “streetwalkers” are prohibited in Jakarta, there is no law prohibiting the sale of sexual services. Yogyakarta Free Children Society, Mohammad Farid, “Indonesian economic crisis boosts prostitution,” Reuters, 26 July 1998
The sex industry takes in US$ 1.2 - US$ 3.6 billion. CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific
The city of Surbaya, with tens of thousands of prostitutes, is the largest sex industry center in South East Asia, which consists of hectares and hectares of modest houses with large, plate-glass windows where bored girls sit waiting: “streets full of human aquariums”. It is also a magnet for the divorced and dispossessed women of the strict Islamic villages. The sex industry serves as a source of women for prostitution in provincial towns, through a black market network of pimps. Louise Williams, “Sex in the Cemetary,” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1997
30% of the girls in Semarang, Indonesia who are homeless are forced into prostitution for survival. University Diponegoro study, Nicholas D. Kristof “Asian Crisis Deals Setbacks to Women”.
Other sites (grim and enlightening) addressing this issue are at:
Intersections: Traditional and Emergent Sex Work in Urban Indonesia
Then there are these sites.
Best Ladies Escort Agency in Jakarta
And…finally
from AFP Penises and Prayer Mats: Its Sexual Healing Indonesian Style
“A consultation with Haji Baban is an encounter with the arcane. Sitting cross-legged in semi-darkness, the patient is asked to detail his wishes with the visual aid of a selection of carved wooden phalluses.
Then comes the diagnosis, delivered after a contemplative silence.
Solemnly, Haji Baban intones that the client’s appendage is “fairly average,” and offers to conjour up a six-centimetre (2.3-inch) extension.
The prescription for such whopping growth is a 10-day course of eating and drinking mystery concoctions and secret potions, with the first dose of bitter berries to be taken immediately, washed down with dark brown liquid.
An assistant then brings a phallus-shaped bamboo tube containing a roll of sticky coconut rice that has to be swallowed whole to avoid what Haji Baban describes ominously as “terrible genital consequences”.
Haji Baban ends the consultation with a vegetable oil that the client must promise to apply daily with a specific hand action from base to tip. And no eating green bananas or citronella, he orders.
The daily cost for treatment is between 700,000 and one million rupees (70-100 dollars), depending on the options selected.
This is a hefty sum for many in Indonesia but the imposing mansions being built around Caringin seem to indicate that plenty of men are willing to pay.
A local motorcycle taxi driver gestures to the newly-built homes and says: “They belong to Mak Erot.”
A Last Note
From begging to the black market to human trafficking to penis enlargement. Such are the rules of the Indonesian household.
I suppose I should be editorializing or moralizing at this point. In this post I have moved from the lighter side (is there one?) to the darker side (most certainly there is one) of the informal economies of Jakarta. I now see that this was sort of an inevitable progression. As it is with all households everything is connected to everything else. It is there in the tension between the rich and poor, the politics and economics of gender, the educated and the uneducated, those with power and those who are disenfranchised.
As Mary S. Zurbuchen writes in Images of Culture and National Development in Indonesia: The Cockroach Opera, “if the poor of Jakarta are like cockroaches, then these purportedly disgusting insects, instead of signifying filth and being driven from sight, must be welcomed. Victorious and pervasive, they persist everywhere, from the sprawling marbel villas of luxury housing estates like Pondok Indah to the immense slums of Tanjung Priok. The roach should not be counted a symbol of the lowlife here but rather a ubiquitous survivor of thousands of fantasies of ultimate extermination”.
And still, time after time Susan Abeyasekere’s words from Jakarta: A History just won’t go away, “the central fallacy [of Jakarta] which has persisted from 1619 to the present is that it is possible to create a city for the privileged few, cut off from the countryside and the majority of the poor”.
This goes to the who, what, why, and where of Jakarta’s informal economies. And it is clear, as the reality of the city declares, that it is not possible to create a city for “the privileged few”.
It is true for Jakarta as it is for any place else you can point to on the planet.
