By : Dedy N. Hidayat
They are the negros of our "world class economy" . . . the pariahs in our market fundamentalism dreams
While we are chasing our own version of American Dream, joining the bandwagon of globalization, and pursuing our place in a world-class community, here are pictures of the other side of us all, to which we -- the market winners and worshipers -- always claim that we are hearing (but never listening), looking (without ever seeing), talking (yet, without speaking) . . . Because we are too far high, in our five-star market fundamentalism dreams.
The fact is . . . we are moving toward an "apartheid economy" . More and more portion of Indonesian population has been progressively excluded by the world of market's instrumental rationality and market forces, marginalized from the never-ending circuit of money-commodity-more money, doomed to become the pariah or decaying sub-population of our fast modernizing Indonesian economy. They've been treated as subhuman, the "negros" in our "world-class economy". Their kids have been separated from the kids of our "world-class schools and universities", they've been denied from the rights for descent and civilized public health services.
The invisible hand of the sacred market made the "unmarketable poor" invicible.They've been evicted from their houses and sidewalks miniscale mall, for the rich need more space for luxurious housing, convenience traffic, and picturesque American-style urban sceneries -- they are forbiden from wandering into our "world-class" malls or shopping arcades that once were public spaces. Their demands, for better wages and treatments, tend to be supressed, and silenced by labeling them as the ghost of long-gone communists movement -- all for the sake of creating a better investment climate.
Indeed, the invicible hand of our free-fight market always treats them without human face. On the contrary, the invisible hand made the "unmarketable have-nots" invicible. They are the negros of the Indonesian neoliberal
