#domocratisation

[Image: even high-rise windows are precariously cleaned on the outside by maids, who sometimes fall to their death.  Foto File/Romeo Gacad/AFP]

[Image above: the typical detritus of a Jakarta Slum.Shawn Saleme [Image below: Double vision: A room in North Jakarta. Jonas Bendiksen.]

Those that live in Jakarta will have noticed the snobbery and anti-egalitarianism of the middle class and the orang kaya baru crowd (the new rich, who aren’t actually “rich” at all).

As Indonesia’s middle class emerged in the 1990s, some hoped that the issues of the redistribution of wealth in its society would become a point of interest for the middle class. It clearly hasn’t. In fact the markers of inequality are ironically more distinct than ever.

[Image above: Jakarta street scene.] [Image below: Jakarta Slum inhabitant keeping up with the material world.] 

[Image above: Jakarta traffic jam.] [Image below: Utility lines in Jakarta]

I sometimes chat with the pembantu (housemaids) of the apartment complex where I live in Jakarta as I get breakfast on my way out into Jakarta’s mind boggling traffic in the morning (made worse daily by the increasing numbers of sedans on the road).

[Image above: Pembantu are a familiar sight on Jakarta's streets. Graduation photo from a domestic 'servant' school]. [Image below: Jakarta, waiting for the train at Palmerah Station.]

They gather in the sun to nurse the babies of their middle-class employers downstairs while their boss sits idly nearby playing with a smartphone, probably tweeting about politics, poverty, environmentalism or democracy.

[Image above: washing clothes in a common area.] [Image below: Jakarta block style apartments/slums]

I asked one of the young pembantu what she thought about the upcoming election last week, to which she replied “I voted for the party my boss asked me to vote for because I don’t undestand”, at which I choked a little on my gorengan and replied with a polite but loaded 'good'.

[Image: Looking out from the inside of a gorengan stand.]

Another said her boss said it wasn't important for her to vote and that they needed her to stay at home to look after their (over-pampered brat of a) child.

[Image: Electrical cabling and water pipes on an apartment block appear to follow no clear rules in Jakarta.]

  People pay their pembantu between $50 and $200 a month here. They are a symbol of status and as having made it as a middle-class Indonesian. They are live in maids, who usually live in a converted laundry-like room at the back of the house or on the floor of the ‘loungeroom’ of the box-like apartments Jakarta’s middle class increasingly favour.

  [Image above:'bestmaid.com']. [Image below: A familiar sight- a Jakarta Maid in uniform at the mall.]

  The apartment complex where I live is chock full of middle class Indonesians who perceive themselves to have made it, simply because they live in an ‘apartment’ which is actually more like a broom closet with little ventilation. But hey, they can say they live in an apartment with a pembantu to trail behind the while they wander aimlessly around the mall downstairs.

Meet Indonesia’s aspirational middle class. Indonesia is big, but it’s growing economy is bigger. Indonesia is the world’s 16th largest economy (Australia is 12th), and the transition of millions of Indonesians out of poverty into a middle or ‘consuming class’ is a big part of that growth story.

[Image: The growing middle class accounts for a major market percentage in global IT products]

But, the reality is, this emerging middle class is actually still very poor. But this class cherish the class markers that distinguish them from their “lower class” fellow Indonesians.

[Images: 2 x Homes under a bridge, Jakarta. Jonas Bendiksen

The so-called consuming class commentators are getting so excited about the appearance of households with earnings of just US$7500 per year at purchasing power parity rates. Incredibly that’s still enough to afford a broom closet apartment and a live in maid.

(God knows where these poor girls sleep. Sometimes they go home to the slum areas of Jakarta each night by the rivers or under the highway toll bridges).

 [Image above: Jakarta's central business district 2013.] [Image below: 5* Hotel in same district provides a clean swim for clients during 2013 floods.]

[Image: children bathing in Jakata's slums].

The world is cheering on Indonesia’s emerging middle class as the potential flagbearers of Indonesia’s democracy; but this society still has a long way to go with it’s outdated notions of elitism and the illusions of prosperity, propped up by an atrocious lack of economic equality- and a class of working poor living on less than $2 a day.

Kate Grealy

lives in Jakarta and tweets at @kategrealy 

______________________________________________________________

[Image: Jonas Bendiksen. Jakarta, Indonesia. 2007. Man living under a traffic bridge in north central Jakarta looks out over the sewage/storm drain below.]

[ Aside from routine evictions, fires, and cramped living quarters, slum dwellers must also contend with the threat of severe flooding as two-fifths of Jakarta sits below sea level. Many of the poorest neighborhoods are near the city’s trash-filled storm drains and have little protection from the annual monsoons.]

______________________________________________________________

Watch this excellent short film by Jonas Bendiksen:

The Places We Live

Over a billion people – a sixth of the world’s population – currently live in slums. Worldwide urbanization and mass poverty have led to many people living a marginalized existence outside the official city limits.

In Places We Live Jonas Bendiksen puts himself at the center of the home, amongst the creative decor, small ornaments and souvenirs, and asks the slum dwellers to recount their lives. The overriding narrative is that of the human capacity to establish a normal life and create a home. Huge variations in the circumstances of individuals and personal style are unveiled, and our understanding of how we live in the twenty-first century is challenged.

______________________________________________________________

[Article's Visual Philosophy by Paloma Concierta]