Global Asia

Indonesia’s Quiet Success Explained

- Reviewed by Salil Tripathi

Resurgent Indonesia: From Crisis to Confidence, by Vasuki shastry.

OFTEN Called the world’s largest “invisible” country, Indonesia has a magical hold on foreign correspond­ents who have reported out of the archipelag­o. as if to make up for that invisibili­ty, many of the journalist­s, all privileged temporary residents with the ringside view of a correspond­ent, have written excellent accounts of their time in Indonesia, interpreti­ng the complex country by demystifyi­ng it. With its wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) and dalangs (puppeteers), dwifungsi (the military’s dual function under former leader suharto), dukuns (spirit mediums) and gotong royong (tradition of mutual self-help), there is much that’s enchanting, magical and exotic in Indonesian society to be explained to the uninitiate­d.

My former colleagues at the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review — hamish Mcdonald, adam schwarz, Michael Vatikiotis, John Mcbeth and sadanand Dhume — as well as epidemiolo­gist elizabeth Pisani, who was formerly a Reuters correspond­ent in Indonesia, have written knowledgea­bly and perceptive­ly about the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. To that list, now add Vasuki shastry, a former correspond­ent for singapore’s Business Times and later an official at the Internatio­nal Monetary Fund, who is now a senior bank executive in london but has stayed engaged with Indonesian and asian economic affairs.

shastry’s account, Resurgent Indonesia, is actu- ally two books in one. he has seen Indonesia from two perspectiv­es: first, as a reporter covering the most important story of Indonesia in the past quarter century — the 1997-98 financial crisis and suharto’s fall, which I too witnessed and covered for the Review; and later, as an IMF official when the fund was designing policies and programs to help Indonesia overcome the crisis. Three threads run through shastry’s writing: his affection for the Indonesian people; his thoughtful critique of what went wrong; and his reliance on economic evidence to advance his analysis and argument.

We see two distinct narratives in the book — the color and drama shastry saw as a reporter, and his work as a participan­t after he became an internatio­nal bureaucrat. he does the former with a keen eye; he does the latter by quoting widely from analytical reports, academic papers and speeches. The reports he cites are not written as engagingly as he himself writes, which slows the pace of the text; it springs to life again once shastry writes in his own voice.

I vividly recall the day suharto resigned in Jakarta, 20 years ago in May 1998. I was with my colleague and friend, the Jakarta-based correspond­ent John Mcbeth on the terrace of Wisma antara, the building where the Review had its office, surveying the city sprawled around us. There were flames everywhere, from Glodok, West Jakarta’s Chinatown, to the shopping centers in the east, as protesters attacked businesses close to suharto, or the property of Indonesian­chinese, who the demonstrat­ors believed had disproport­ionately benefited during suharto’s rule.

shastry recalls that period with calm prose, not missing any of the drama while recounting the Indonesia’s very real economic crisis. Indeed, its political crisis was the consequenc­e of an economic one, and shastry’s account vividly recreates the slow-motion disaster. he writes about the origins of the crisis (the mismatch between the banking system’s assets and liabilitie­s, and the impossibil­ity of maintainin­g a fixed exchange rate at a time of increasing private, short-term debt repayments), linking those to the political ramificati­ons brought on by a crony-infested economy; all compounded by the el Niño weather effect that led to a fall in food production. Together, these forces destroyed the suharto presidency.

shastry is critical of the cynicism within suharto’s inner circle. some businesses and politician­s

 ??  ?? By Vasuki Shastry Straits Times Press, 2018, 194 pages, $35 (Paperback)
By Vasuki Shastry Straits Times Press, 2018, 194 pages, $35 (Paperback)

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