Naturalization and Indonesia's Human Development

OUR FUTURE. Indonesia's population pyramid is still dominated by children and youths; hence if the country really wants to make big leap in the future, it really needs to pay more attention towards its human capital development –especially ensuring decent education to its younger generation.

My lecturer on population economics class, a brainy and bright young economist named Elda Pardede, said that the easiest way to measure the quality of human capital in one country was to see its sport development. In the case of Indonesia, she is simply not mistaken.

Although the racist Adolf Hitler might not be happy, but overseeing Germany’s demographic trend, there isn’t anything wrong when the Germany national football team had to naturalize and depend on Poland-born players such as Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose to reach the semi-final round in the last World Cup.

But clearly something is not right with Indonesia’s human capital development when Indonesia Soccer Association (PSSI) decided to convert the 34-year old, Uruguay-born, Cristian Gonzales into Indonesian to give extra cutting edge to the national team.

Unlike Indonesia, such case could be allowed to happen in Germany since in Europe young and working-age population number is on serious decline, with most of the European countries facing serious threat of their ageing population, and employers there are struggling to find young and reliable workforce nowadays.

In Germany, the 2009 data from World Bank shows that population number decreases by 0.3% compared to the previous year, whilst the federal statistics office of the country forecasts that by 2060 Germany will see its population number to decline to 65-70 million from current population of 81 million.

But while Germany is now recognized as the country that has one of the lowest birth-rates in the world and may find difficulties in finding young people to fill its workforce in the future; the future is supposed to be bright for Indonesia, as its population structure is dominated with youths. More than a half of Indonesia’s 230 million population number is still under 30 years of age –a fact that bolsters the country’s productivity and thus plays important role behind its rapid economic growth.

True, the 34-year-old Cristian Gonzales still has the goal-scoring prowess that our national football team desperately needs. But considering the overwhelming number of Indonesia’s youths in our 230 million people, is the human development of Indonesian really that bad, thus there is no other Indonesian-born striker younger than Gonzales who is up for the task just to score goals?

Indonesia’s underachievement in sports –like our recent disappointment in Asian Games at Guangzhou where we only managed to get 4 gold medals while our close neighbors Thailand and Malaysia brought home 11 and 9 gold medals, respectively– is just one tangible evidence out of many government’s failures to promote Indonesia’s human capital development.

For another example; does anybody know where the state budget for education goes? Because in my campus, there was brouhaha several months ago among students and the University of Indonesia (UI) rector regarding his decision to raise the tuition and entrance fee to the university.

The price very much depends on the major, but prospective undergraduate students in UI have to pay at the range of 10-25 million rupiah for the entrance fee, with yearly tuition fee of 10-15 million rupiah –that’s 10 million rupiah (US$ 1,100) a year if your son dreams to become a future economist like myself, and 15 million rupiah (US$ 1,600) a year if he wants to become a doctor and goes to medical school.

“Tuition fee in UI is very expensive, and a son of tukang bubur (porridge seller) like me could never be able to study there,” said one prospective student of UI concerning the matter in an internet forum.

In case of future human development issues of Indonesia, the words above highlight the disappointment of our younger generations who represent the largest share in Indonesia’s population pyramid.

In fact, those younger generations mostly come from working-class family background, and they are pinning their hopes on state universities to get higher education with relatively cheap price –or even free–, so they can get a better life in the future and liberate themselves from the devil circle of poverty.

Several days ago, The Jakarta Post published a pride-oozing headline on its front page titling “RI makes big strides in human development,” (Dec 11). Well, really?

Speaking from my own experience in my university, as well as my observation on Indonesia sports achievement, the data presented on that news seems to be somewhat different with what happens in reality.

But the good news is: Unlike Germany, our age structure is far from ageing, our population pyramid is still dominated by youths, and clearly we have no shortage of young workforce. If Indonesian policymakers and lawmakers pay more heed to education and Indonesia’s human capital development, and redirect policies to enhance the quality of Indonesian workforce, Europe’s ageing and declining population could actually become our advantage in the future.

Predictably, what happens nowadays is almost the opposite, since policymakers and lawmakers don’t like to do something if they could not get the credit for it, while policies on population and human capital development, unfortunately, tend show their effects in the very, very long run.

We have already had our failure in football’s youth development, and in the future we certainly don’t want things to become worse so we will have to naturalize another Uruguayan to become our next Finance Minister.

This article was published in The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, December 14 2010

The England's Enigma

THE ITALIAN JOB. England's manager Fabio Capello is seen here walking out from the stadium after the 1-4 crushing defeat against Germany in 2010 World Cup. The Italian tactician disappoints his employer, the England Football Association, which has paid him US$ 9,000,000 per year only to see England eliminated in the second round.

Before the World Cup 2010 kicked off, renowned investment bank J.P. Morgan published a 69-page analysis on which nation will bring home the coveted trophy in South Africa. To predict the result of the upcoming World Cup, the analysis applies Quant economic models –a mathematical method which is occasionally used by financial services firms like J.P Morgan to predict stock returns.

The analysis was impressive –so impressive that to predict the final outcome, it includes many variables like market valuation (bookmakers’ odds), FIFA ranking, historical results, J.P Morgan Team Strength Indicator, and even calculates the possibility of each nation to emerge as winner in a penalty shootout if it ever encounters such situation in the knockout phase.

Would you be surprised if based on J.P Morgan’s thorough and comprehensive calculations, they conclude that England will be the World Cup’s champions?

The conclusion of the analysis was hardly surprising considering what the Italian Fabio Capello has in its armory. England, just like old times, enters every major tournament as favorite but always failed to deliver their true potential in field.

England boasting one of the world’s finest marksmen in the shoes of Wayne Rooney, a 34-goal-a-season forward who was so lethal in the penalty box last season that his two-week absence because of injury was the main cause of Manchester United’s failure to lift the English Premiere League title for unprecedented fourth in succession.

Its midfield encompasses the likes of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard whose vast energy, endless determination, and goal-scoring prowess make them both irreplaceable and indispensable in their own club.

And if Brazil in 2006 was once famous for its “Fantastic Four” in Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka, and Adriano; England’s back-four of Glen Johnson, Ashley Cole, John Terry, and Rio Ferdinand (the last was unlucky to be injured for this World Cup) are no less than fantastic as they are inarguably among the best defenders in the world –in fact they are exactly what you need to prevent the most dangerous forwards, like those skillful Brazilians, from tearing your defense apart.

To put it in a nutshell, with those world-class players, England has perhaps the best ingredients every manager can blend in a team.

But there they are, headed to another early exit yet again and caused weeks of research done by J.P Morgan to become a laughing stock as they fail to fulfill such hopes. English football fans can only watch in dismay as the Germans merciless crushed a team filled with world-class players like Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard by 4-1 –the least expected score you would imagine from a match that pits two evenly-contested teams, and eternal archrivals, like Germany and England.

Some blame Capello’s stubbornness to strict to his musty 4-4-2 shape, while others blame the English press for being too cruel and giving too much pressure for the players themselves. But beware English people, you should stop looking backward and blaming things. In fact, the future of England national team is in jeopardy and that’s a more urgent problem that needs to be considered very seriously.

Without doubt, this is England’s last chance to mark its name in football’s biggest stage after their triumph in 1966. The statistics shows, however, that this is the oldest England squad ever compete in World Cup, and for the next major competition that England fancies to take part maybe Fabio Capello (it seems that he is likely to retain his position because of the lavish contract fees that England FA have to pay if they wish to terminate his contract) can learn one thing or two from his Italian colleague Marcelo Lippi.

Lippi should take most of the blame for Italy’s early exit in a relatively easy -if not easiest- group in South Africa, as the performance level of the likes of aged Andrea Pirlo and Fabio Cannavaro is no longer the same compared to four years ago, when then Lippi’s popularity as manager shot to stardom as he guided the calciopoli-plagued, golden-age Italians to their fourth World Cup title.

Considering the level of performance of Gerrard’s and Terry’s will possibly decline because of their age in the next European Cup and World Cup, Capello should learn from Lippi’s fault about how important a squad regeneration is.

With England’s golden generation getting older and English football club is getting used to throw foreign players instead of locals in the football field, England football fans may have to cope with the reality that in the future their team will be in a serious decline into a mediocre team.

English people should be wary. When those football fans see England's perfomances in the next World Cup in four or eight years to come, they must brace themselves if the three lions they once proudly support evolve into three pussycats.

Time for the Young to Take Over

THE YEAR OF THE PRODIGY. Last year of 2009 saw prolific young men rising to the next level and taking over the lead from the older generations. (From top left, clockwise) Anies Baswedan, Gumilar Somantri, Firmanzah, Barack Obama, Jonathan Favreau, and Josep Guardiola.

Persons who are in charge of top-level management positions are usually on the age of 50s or 60s. But few months ago my university friends and I were covered in disbelief as we found out that our newly-elected dean, impressively, did not follow suit. Still at the age of only 33, Pak Firmanzah rose against the seemingly impossible odds to beat other more experienced candidates to become the youngest-ever dean in the history of University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Economics (FEUI).

Because of his young age, at first many consider him as green and lacking on experience to lead the faculty –but so far he has proven the critics wrong. It has only been eight months since Pak Fiz –that’s how we usually call him– took charge as our new dean, but his hard-working attitude and attentive leadership style have made him a popular figure among us FEUI students.

My respected dean is not alone in this case. Recently such occurrence can no longer be considered as unlikely; up to this day we have seen a significant increase in number of younger people who have been given huge responsibility to hold an important role in high level –and so far they have proven to us that they can perform the given task as well as the older and more experienced generation does.

Before Firmanzah, In Indonesia the predecessor includes the person to whom he has to report now, Gumilar Rusliwa Soemantri, who became University of Indonesia’s rector at the age of only 44. UI sees a significant increase of its THES QS universities rank from 287^th to 201^st this year among 4000 universities which were evaluated, thanks to various internal reforms in UI that were encouraged by Gumilar himself.

Even more impressive is the achievement of Anies Baswedan, the rector of Paramadina University whose intellect earned him a place as one of the members of the so-called “Team 8”. Anies Baswedan was merely 38 years old when he was appointed as the head of the University and despite his relatively young age today he is highly regarded as one of the brightest political analysts in Indonesia.

Young people are rising and we can see that this phenomenon does happen in almost every sector in the world. In sports, this year many football pundits heaped praises on Josep Guardiola’s managerial ability as he rose to become the youngest UEFA Champions League winning manager ever. Only in his first season at the club, Guardiola, the former Spanish international who just turned 38 this year, successfully lead his star-studded FC Barcelona team to win the competition, having beaten the veteran 67-year old Sir Alex Ferguson and his Manchester United team in the final.

In world politics, perhaps this year will be best remembered because of the historic victory of Barack Obama, who, despite the robust challenge by far older and more experienced persons like John McCain and Hillary Clinton during the election, has been able to win the US presidential election and become the fifth-youngest man in the US history to occupy the oval office.

Barack Obama seems to read the wind as he also trusted several of his key posts to be given to the younger colleague of his. More experienced economist like the 66-year-old Joseph Stiglitz was left out in the cold and Obama decided to choose younger faces like 48-year-old Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary or 40-year-old Peter Orzag as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget instead. Obama also appointed a young writing-prodigy named Jonathan Favreau, 28, as his Director of Speechwriting –and a brilliant speech deliverer and best-seller book author like Barack Obama definitely doesn’t trust ordinary man in doing that task, which allows the person to have a massive authority in controlling his words.

But unfortunately we did not have much choice during the last presidential election. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono certainly represented the older generation when he took oath as our president in the age of 60, and the same can also be said to his vice-president Boediono who was 67. Other candidates are very much the same and the youngest among them all is vice-president candidate Prabowo Subianto who, despite all of his youthful spirit and stirring speeches which he brought to us, was actually 57 and surely he will be a bit long in the tooth if he is to represent younger generation in the 2014 election.

Indonesia is lagging behind on the regeneration and this becomes a millstone around our neck today; you can just look to the last presidential election’s candidates or SBY’s ministerial cabinet formation and you will realize that both are still dominated by stale and old-timer politicians. We may have just finished our presidential election this year, but as we usher to the year of 2010 and are gearing up to the next 2014 election we might well start considering about rejuvenation.

Yes, the bitter fact is that Indonesia still highly depends to the older generation up to present –public are fed up staring at the same old faces and are ravenous for having younger generations to replace them.

In this year of 2009, people like Firmanzah, Gumilar Rusliwa Soemantri, Anies Baswedan, Barack Obama, and Josep Guardiola have proven to us that young people are up against the challenge. In the next year of 2010, will there be more number of young people who emerge at various top levels just like last year? Or will this be the year of revelation for someone waiting in the wings to bring about the rejuvenation in Indonesia’s 2014 election?

This article was part of the limited edition copy of The Jakarta Post special report; Review 2009 and Outlook 2010