The people of Indonesia & their culture, politics, economy and environment - Inside Indonesia: The peoples and cultures of Indonesia

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Mining – who benefits?

Two carts rest on a mining site path. The photo is taken at an angle where the path appears to be going down from left to right.

Mining law changes in decentralising Indonesia raises new challenges and opportunities for local communities

Resource nationalism as imperialism

A worker at a mining site points to the low-hanging clouds.

Foreign investment in large-scale mining has encountered serious obstacles

Has resource extraction reduced poverty?

A child worker pushes a wheelbarrow of harvest along in an oil palm plantation.

The benefits of more concentrated natural resources are less likely to be spread

Mining the land, mining people

A mining base, with a pipe running across the foreground and some wooden structures.

Irrespective of location or commodity, peasants now compete with multinational mining companies on the mineral-rich tracts of Indonesia

Review: The ideology of the family state

David Reeve reviews David Bourchier’s important contribution to understandings of political thinking in Indonesia

A write-off

School textbooks in Indonesia fail to teach environmental sustainability

Safe water at a premium

The UN’s claim that 87 per cent of Indonesians have access to safe drinking water seems exaggerated

The forgotten killings

Monumen Bambu Runcing (Bamboo Spear Monument), Surabaya Credit: Lidya Mewengkang

The slaughter of Indonesians by young nationalists has been hidden by romantic narratives of the independence struggle

Jalan Indonesia

Pursuing justice through local initiatives

Where to now for the MDGs in Indonesia?

The Millennium Development Goals addressed the basic development needs of Indonesia, but tackling poverty now requires a more complex strategy

Disability data and the development agenda in Indonesia

Indonesia needs stronger data to better include people with disabilities in the post-MDG era

An ongoing environmental challenge

More action is needed if Indonesia is to slow its current world record rate of forest loss

Keeping women and babies healthy within an unequal system

Problems of unequal access explain differences in Indonesia’s achievement of child mortality and maternal mortality targets

Quantity but not quality

Indonesia is on track to achieve universal primary education, but questions remain about the quality of education

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

Indonesia has halved poverty since 1990, but significant challenges remain

Making the Millennium Development Goals real

Indonesian policy-makers need to reflect on the challenges of implementing the MDGs as they prepare for the post-2015 agenda

Drowning not waving

Challenges for the protection of asylum seekers at sea in Indonesia

Politics from below

Picture of Prabowo on a car - Vembri Waluyas

Street vendors have organised successfully at the local level, but effective national organisation has proved more elusive

Film review: From horror and porn stars…to Jokowi

KK Dheeraj’s unauthorised biopic is full of tears and belaboured symbolism

Amri Yahya and the Sydney University Labor Club

A link to Australia’s support of the Indonesian revolution

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Lontar Modern Indonesia

A selection of stories from the Indonesian classics and modern writers, periodically published free for Inside Indonesia readers, courtesy of Lontar.