Road Infrastructure in the Village for Whom?

"I sometimes find it difficult to differentiate, which village head is the head of the project," said a friend at a coffee shop in Makassar, South Sulawesi. The sentence was said by the friend from West Sulawesi when we were having a relaxed discussion about the current condition of the village.

His statement was quite intriguing so that I and a number of other friends were unable to resist laughing. But I quickly tried to examine the friend's statement, and there was some truth. Some of us saw a number of village heads only focusing on building roads in their area.

This view is reinforced by data from the Ministry of Disadvantaged Areas and Transmigration in 2018, which mentions a drastic increase in roads in villages in recent years. For 2015 to 2018 for example, the road reaches 121,709 km in length which divides 83,344 villages throughout Indonesia. On average, in one year, village roads are built along 40,570 km. If measured based on the increase in the number of roads in Trans Sulawesi, that is 20 times more than connecting Makassar to Manado. That is, infrastructure regimes are being rooted to the villages.

For the government it is an achievement, because they believe in the myth that improving road infrastructure will help improve the welfare of rural communities. So that the village head's effort like a "contractor" must be supported. But in our discussion of the woles, other friends said that was it true that the villagers were helped by their economy by improving roads? We also think about the truth of the myth in a variety of references.

In the book "Fighting the Infrastructure Regime; Political Economy Study "by Muhammad Ridha, the long history of road construction is explained in detail and interestingly, starting from the construction of the Post Highway on Java which was made at the behest of the Governor of the Indies; Herman William Deandels.

It was stated that the Governor's goal was to build a road to simplify and accelerate the colonization and transportation of crops. And this goal was continued by the Government of Indonesia through the addition and repair of roads made by Deandels. And according to Ridha all of them are more directed at the interests of capital accumulation. "The road has always been built not for the people but for the interests of the elite class and capital owners," he wrote.

In the same book, Muhammad Ridha also gave an example of how the construction of the Java southern crossing road (JLS) in the Pacitan area, East Java, became one of the factors that influenced the ease of agricultural land apart from control, increasing the exclusion of farmers to rural areas. and the increasing narrowness of agricultural land. Can this also happen in the countryside today? we finally agreed it might be the same.

The smoothness of the village road is not only a matter of economic improvement, it can even open a tap for investors to control potential farmers' land. Even the construction of infrastructure including roads in the village also tends to be the land for the elements of the village government to fertilize corruption practices. This is in accordance with ICW (Indonesia Corruption Watch) notes that, from 2015 to 2017, corruption cases at the village level have more than doubled each year. The total cases from that period were 154 cases.

There are also many modes, ranging from the practice of budget abuse as many as 51 cases, embezzlement of 32 cases, fictitious reports of 17 cases, fictional activities / projects of 15 cases, and inflation of 14 cases. The total state loss caused by Rp. 47.56 billion. The actors also varied, ranging from village heads, village officials to family members of the village head. But most of them were village heads with 112 people.

Seeing this phenomenon, it is not naive to view the development of road infrastructure in the village as it benefits the village elite and capitalist groups rather than the small community. No exception villages in the area of ​​West Sulawesi. Do we have to reject the construction of the road? I don't think so. Roads can only be built, but they must be accompanied by rural human resource development.

Do not become lame because the weak village community will not be able to make maximum use of the road infrastructure. So that the practice of imperialism on community land is unavoidable. There are many more human programs that can be created and practiced in a number of villages. For example, formal education access assistance for residents in Ponggok Village, Klaten Regency, Central Java Province is carried out by the village government. The program is known as "1 House 1 Bachelor".

In addition, the creation of a Village-Owned Business Entity is fairly successful there. The business entity managed to increase the income of the village and its residents. Other villages should be able to imitate the program. Including for villages in West Sulawesi.

Mulya Sarmono SH
Advocate and Writer