Community radios under pressure?

Despite my latest posts about the virtues of community radio, the government seems to be going the other way around.

Last week, some Jakarta community radios were "ordered off the airwaves"; they were claimed to be interfering with the navigation system in Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta.

Unfortunately, it's not clear whether this interference is true. The frequency used for aviation radio is 118.3 MHz. However, Jawis FM, a school-based community radio that uses the 107.6 FM frequency at a meager 50 watt power was also told to stop its broadcasting activities. So was the Suara Warga Jakarta (Voice of Jakartans) radio, whose power only extends to a mere 2.5 kilometers radius.

So the question is: have the government followed the necessary procedure? Do they actually have proof of which radios are interfering with aviation frequency?

Does this progress have any correlation with the closing down of some 14 radios in Sorong, West Papua, late last year? Here's what I read from a credible source: These radios were said to be "caught red-handed" committing crime and jeopardizing national stability. And the interesting part: the procedure is that before closing down a radio, the government should provide information/guidance, and then a warning letter. However, at that time, the officer only had a general letter from the Ministry of ICT about "reporting the existence" of radios.

What's going on here?

Does the government still consider community broadcasting 'scary'? Adhi Wicaksana thinks that regulations concerning community radio are, at best, still at odds with each other.

Despite all this, do consider a few more great examples of community radio role:

• The Jakarta Community Radio, "established in 2003 as a communication tool for local residents", has "the only radio program of its kind in the capital, perhaps the entire country, dedicated to the interests and needs of the disabled community."
• The community radio in Wiladeg, Central Java, is giving the people a media to practice democracy and good governance.
• The Voice of Muhammadiyah Radio in Aceh provides a service for tsunami-affected communities to trace missing relatives.

technorati tags: community-radio, ICT-for-development

Community radios reach out to West Sumatra earthquake victims

Yet another earthquake. This time, one with a power of 5.8 Richter scale hit West Sumatra some 2 weeks ago.

Combine's SaksiGempa site (in Indonesian) reports that the community radio association of West Sumatra, working together with 4 member radios, is providing a media center service for victims of the recent earthquake, the government, and aid agencies.

Radios Radila and Semarak, both in Solok, and radios Suandri and Bahana, both in Padang Pariaman, are clarifying information regarding issues of follow-up quakes with the meteorology and geophysics agency. Then they broadcast the results to reduce the panic situation caused mainly by uncertainty.

Said Hendri Ihsan, a local NGO/community radio activist,

Communication in the earthquake-affected area is down. Moreover, the mountainous geographic condition in this area makes it difficult to disseminate information. Radio is the most effective means.

Hendri's contact information is available here.

technorati tags: ICT-for-development, community-radio

Innovations in rural information service

Kompas (in Indonesian language) has some encouraging articles to start off the week. For one, the cost of narrowing the (urban-rural) digital divide is heading down with the new Base Transceiver Station (BTS) technology called FLASH OFDM (Fast-hopping Low-latency Access with Seamless Handover Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing).

OFDM technology operates at 450 MHz frequency, can accommodate bandwidth of up 5.3 Mbps, can reach a distance of up to 70 kilometers. Much more efficient as we'd need less BTS to connect more areas. Best of all, OFDM can be integrated with GSM networks using a mini, very portable, "nanoGSM" BTS that is of paper size and of 2.7 Kg weight. Imagine that: carrying your own BTS around that can serve both voice and data.

We don't know when this technology (currently developed by Siemens) will be available. Hopefully soon. Still, a major problem in popularizing the internet in Indonesia is the prohibitive cost of bandwidth. So all this hoopla, including the hoopla about 3G, is nonsense if bandwidth quality is still patchy and cost too high.

In another article, the daily profiled an inspiring role of community radio in helping the post-disaster (tsunami) recovery of Pangandaran coastal area, West Java. Founded to respond to the disaster aftermath last year, the radio called Suara Pangandaran Darurat Recovery Ciamis Selatan (Drecs) has been providing post-disaster information that's easily accessible by affected people. They have good contact with the meteorology and geophysics agency, and even sometimes the police and army asks them for some information.

Now the local teachers' association (PGRI) has been collaborating to provide distance education through radio waves. A show called "free talk," where community members and local leaders alike can participate, discusses local development issues, from regularization of informal traders to issues of internally displaced people.

Now, wouldn't it be cool if we can see some kind of collaboration between a technology like OFDM and community radios?

technorati tags: ICT-for-development,, community-radio

True cost economics

A significant change happening in my thoughts for the past few years is this increase of interest in economics and finance. My dear sister, who happens to be an economist, is damn tired of me asking her all sort of dumb economic questions :) She even wrote a nice post about my new obsession, which - of all things - should be read by Greg Mankiw the economics professor himself! Yikes.

Anyways, I find it amusing that a lot of what matters, we already learned in our early childhood years. I remember how grade school taught me that economics comes from the Greek words "oikos" and "nomos", which means "household" and "science". And when you're running a household, you want your family (meaning everyone in the household) to be wealthy and happy. Thus gaining/creating wealth is as important as making sure that it gets distributed accordingly.

And so I find it interesting how The Economist views globalization (free trade across national borders). In their special report of September 2006, titled The Power of the Emerging World, the magazine pointed out (subscription required) how globalization has increased the total "wealth" created by the whole world: that profit, as percentage of total economic output, is at an all-time high; that globalization has brought better outcome to the world.

But hold on. Who is "the world"? I am reminded of the recent corny Pertamina (Indonesian state-owned oil company) TV ad that says "if you buy Pertamina lubricants, you gain and the nation gains". The question is, "who do you mean by 'the nation'?" It's quite common knowledge that profits of big state-owned companies is kept or even misappropriated by a few people. So does the nation really gain? Theoretically, yes - because Pertamina is a state-owned company. In reality, not if you consider the majority of the people who have very little to gain from it (if at all).

Which brings back to the question of globalization. OK, so globalization has brought more profit at the world scale over time. And if you divide this increasing profit by the number of the population, it seems that the world is getting better off, on average. But that's not how profit is distributed. You don't just give it out evenly to everybody. What's happening now is that although the cake is getting bigger, more and more of it is being eaten by less and less people. The Economist admitted that

workers' share of the cake in rich countries is now the smallest it has been for at least three decades (see chart 5). In many countries average real wages are flat or even falling.…

In other words, we have increasing inequality, and this this can be better seen through the median, or the Gini Coefficient.

It's funny how economists are taught all these quantitative tools, but when it comes to free trade, they seem to only use the average. Thus I am reminded of a quote from my sister's professor: "Ideologies are for people who are too lazy to think."

So far we've just been talking about the paradox behind the internal workings of economics when applied to free trade. What about the impact of free trade on the environment and on communities? What about leisure time, unpaid housework, family breakdown, increase of crime? What about ecological footprints? Are they reflected in the GDP? Economists have often dismissed these as "externalities." But if we're trying to view/study economics in all its completeness and in real world application, these should be seriously factored in.

Alright, I'll stop here. I'm not even an economist. But I am thrilled that Adbusters is co-leading the campaign to demand better economics education, based on a more realistic science. They call it "True Cost Economics":

This is our most urgent campaign: a fight to revolutionize economics before our planet is destroyed. We need a new economic paradigm - one that is open, holistic, and human scale [...] The economic revolution begins with jamming Economics departments. It ends with an entirely new way to measure progress.

Here's another interesting quote:

[E.F. Schumacher] coined the term “Buddhist economics” to describe the opposite of the Western economic model, one that didn’t allow for unlimited growth and consumption and emphasized renewable resources. For those who questioned what Buddhism had to do with economics, Schumacher replied, “Economics without Buddhism, i.e., without spiritual, human and ecological values, is like sex without love.”

Don't get me wrong. I think economics is important, and livelihood (earning money) is a big factor of what makes the world tick. However, isn't it time that economics be freed from economists who are blinded by their own ideology, be it left or right?

technorati tags: economics,, globalization,, true-cost-economics

Coming soon: the $100 (or so) laptop

So the poor kids' gadget to bridge the digital divide will be available in developing countries this month! Newsweek has a cool interview with Negroponte about it recently, calling it "the people's laptop". OK, so the price is still $150 - but the MIT guru said he'll work it down to $100.

But what's maybe cooler is the (less than) "$100 Un-PC" produced by Chennai-based company Novatium. It looks a lot more familiar to the people - just like a PC, but stripped down to the very basic parts (it only uses cell-phone processors).

The main difference between the two products is the drive behind them: Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child machine "is dependent on the kindness of wealthy partners." Whereas Novatium's Nova NetPC was about making profit, and "making the computer affordable was only part of the equation."

This reminds me of the clash of ideas between William Easterly in "The White Man's Burden" and Jeffrey Sach's "The End of Poverty".

Who will prevail?

Image from: tech.blorge.com

technorati tags: ICT-for-development

Jakarta flood and urbanization failure

One big reason for the Jakarta flooding is our failure to urbanize properly. As Lefebvre said, everything is now essentially "urban": from the Thamrin-Sudirman corridor, to the mountains of Puncak in West Java, even to the forests of Papua - meaning they are under the power of urban capital interests.

So why shouldn't the old natural flood plains of Jakarta (now places called Pantai Indah Kapuk and Kelapa Gading) fall into urban interests, as every place has? Why - specifically in Jakarta - do such interests manifest in extreme forms: building settlements where there should be none, thus risking their lives and the lives of others? Quite simple: no choice.

People need to live in the city, and they couldn't. I mean, if apartments cost Rp 10 million per square meter (and renting is far from cheap, too), then how many people can afford to live in the city? Naturally, sprawl happens. Destruction of nature is not only due to rich people wanting to have grand villas in Puncak, but also our failure to urbanize Jakarta properly.

But this may about to change. Remember Jusuf Kalla's wild idea (i.e. here and here) to build 20-storey public low income flats (rumah susun) all over big cities in Indonesia? Well, that may soon materialize (although hopefully the Government will not take his words literally!). Last week, the President just approved the exemption of value added tax (PPN) of rumah susun development by developers. The BTN bank apparently is quite excited. They've allocated Rp 1 trillion for financing this. The Director said,

If the Government can provide interest rate subsidy of 3%, then that will bring the interest rate down from currently 14% to 11%.

Hey, 11% is quite close to the 10% that Ciputra wanted. Last year, the big real estate mogul said that if he gets 10% rate, he is "willing to invest whatever it takes to build low-income flats in Jakarta."

Are we about to see a better urbanization of Jakarta?

technorati tags: settlements, cities, urban, Jakarta

On Network

Interesting that I should read Dewi's post that mentions informal community networks in Jakarta and Bangkok, and not long afterwards I stumble on Kazys Varnelis' "The Rise of Network Culture," through his blog post.

Being a fan of Manuel Castells, I read the latter quite excitedly, and found it to be a good further exploration on the importance of networks. It's quite a heavy and philosophical read (not sure I understood all of it), stating how "network culture" is the next big thing after modernism and postmodernism. I quote my favorite part:

Today, network culture succeeds postmodernism. It does so in a more subtle way. It does not figure itself as an “ism” that would lay claim to the familiar territory of manifestos, symposia, definitive museum exhibits and so on, but rather servers as a more emergent phenomenon.

A question remains in my head: how does this entirely "new cultural condition" link to the lives of the poor? Surely, they have networks too; in fact, many aspects of their livelihoods depend on networks. Would networks mean more to them now, as more people in rural areas have access to cell-phones, than before?

technorati tags: network

Nerdtivist, or is it Actinerd?

I'm just back from a two-week mission, learning about a new approach to development. While my head is screaming to let some of its content out, I think I'll let it sit for a while as I try to sort out the good parts from the details.

In the meantime, let me share some interesting articles I've recently found. They're all related to ICT for development.

Apparently, there's a gap between traditional activists and the FOSS (free and open source software) community. While the two may "frequently share ethical positions and social interests ranging from freedom of expression and cooperative organization to consumer rights, privacy, and anti-trust legislation, mostly the two groups remain unaware of each other." Why? Byfield in Linux.com shares what he thinks. It's somehow related to language (jargon) gap, domain of work gap, and even age gap.

Still related, I also found through the CivicActions blog that Creative Commons has just released a "Developing Nations" license.

This new license allows creators to make their works available for attributed free distribution (copies can be freely shared, providing the original creator is credited) in the Global South, while still retaining all copyright control in the Global North.

Here's another good quote:

We're trying to hack the copyright system, in the programmers sense of hack. Not to break it but make it function in ways it wasn't intended to work. That's not because we're opposed to copyright, but because we're opposed to copyright functioning in ways that don't benefit either the author or the end user. Copyright is meant to be a tool to promote invention

So why oh why does a gap still lie between the nerds and the activists?

technorati tags: ICT-for-development

Slow Cities

Tired of racing all the time, trying to catch the economy while losing on "good life"? Well, consider this: an international (mostly European) network of cities are joining the "Slow Cities" movement. Here's a piece from Planetizen:

[E]ven though the dynamics of globalization are affecting cities and regions, urban planners, mayors, and citizens of small towns are taking action to resist processes of standardization and homogenization. Slow Cities are dedicated to community economic development efforts that focus on the unique attributes of a place such as small businesses, locally owned restaurants, farmers markets, and socially responsible enterprises.
...
Slow Cities want to be at the forefront of cutting-edge urban planning ideas, technology and innovation. They are not against locating a McDonald's, but rather hope that through their efforts the citizens will become educated consumers who are aware of the local choices and option for getting fresh, healthly and tasty meals. Slow Cities want to be eventful places where local traditions are celebrated and mixed with cosmopolitan influences.

I see this in-line with the rationale behind "smart growth":

Smart growth tries to take into consideration the total long-term economic costs of development decisions, rather than merely an aggregation of the short term profits that can be made by improving each individual parcel of land.

As in: sure, (economic) development is important, but what about preserving some "good life" while we're pursuing it, for us and for our children?

technorati tags: cities, development, growth, slow-cities

Buy Nothing Day: Nov 24 & 25

Consumption is important. Some would say that it's so important, it's "the most fundamental decision unit." Others would say that it's so important, once in a while we need to stop and think about it, be critical about it, and not just take it for granted.

Adbusters is part of the latter. Here's what they say:

"Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If you’ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if you’ve taken part in the past but haven’t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?"

technorati tags: political-economy, consumerism, buy-nothing-day