Adi Marsiela, Cipaku Village, West Java – The Cipaku village square is located, fittingly enough for this agrarian heart of West Java, in the middle of rice fields ringed by thickly forested hills.
To get to it last Friday morning, the village's 2,200 inhabitants had to trudge single file along the narrow embankments demarcating the paddies, or risk soiling their Idul Fitri finery in the knee-deep mud of the fields on either side.
For all the joy and bonhomie engendered by the holiest and most festive occasion in the Islamic calendar, the mood of the Idul Fitri prayer this year in the village square was particularly somber; in two weeks' time, the entire village, and seven others nearby as well as parts of a further 20 villages in Sumedang district, would disappear forever beneath the waters of the Cimanuk River, rushing in to fill up a structure more than half a century in the making: the Jatigede reservoir.
The reservoir was first planned in 1963, under Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. But it was only in 2004, under the country's sixth president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that the government finally declared the project would go ahead. The flooding of the reservoir is set to commence on Aug. 1 this year, and once filled, Jatigede will represent perhaps the closest thing to fulfillment of the lofty development programs underpinning the administration of President Joko Widodo.
Set to hold 980 million cubic meters of water and covering an area of 41 square kilometers, Jatigede will be the second-biggest reservoir in the country (dwarfed only by the 3-billion-cubic-meter Jatiluhur dam, on the Citarum River in West Java). The water in the reservoir will help irrigate 90,000 hectares of land, while a hydroelectric power plant, to be built by China's Sinohydro and set to go into operation in 2019, will generate 110 megawatts of electricity.
'Last Lebaran in Cipaku'
But none of those goals may see the light of day if the residents of Cipaku have their way, says village chief Didin Nurhadi.
Didin was mutedly defiant about the village's fate when he opened his Idul Fitri sermon on that clear Friday morning: "Let us hope that this is not our last Lebaran here in Cipaku."
The villagers, he later tells the Jakarta Globe, are not against the dam and the opportunities for social and economic progress that it represents; their issue is with the manner in which the government is shooing them off their land.
In a telling indication of how important this project is to the Joko administration, the first presidential regulation he signed in 2015 was a set of guidelines for expediting the relocation of affected residents from the Jatigede flood plain.
But it is that regulation, and its broad, sweeping injuctions – "any social or communal disputes that arise from the construction of the dam need to be resolved immediately so that the flooding of the reservoir may be carried out as scheduled" – that the Cipaku villagers are holding out against.
"What we want from the Jokowi administration is to be relocated in a humane manner," Didin says. "We're not sheep, we're not animals. Even trash has its place, so why can't we be moved somewhere appropriate?"
Two-tiered payout
The problem with the government's relocation program is that there isn't one: the presidential regulation instead lists a two-tiered cash payout for residents, leaving them on their own when it comes to finding new homes and land to farm.
When the government relocates an entire community, it is obliged to ensure that they can continue with their old way of life, says Arip Yogiawan, the director of the Bandung Legal Aid Institute (LBH), which is challenging the presidential regulation at the Supreme Court on behalf of the villagers.
"These people are all farmers. If you're going to move them, then you have to ensure that they can continue farming, and not compel them to turn to other forms of livelihood. You have to look out for their interests over the long term," he says.
Under the scheme, the villagers are divided into two groups: those whose land is included in a 1975 inventory of areas to be affected by the reservoir, and those whose land is not on the list. The first group is entitled to a Rp 122 million ($9,100) payout per household – which comprises compensation for any buildings, land and loss of income – while the second group gets Rp 29 million per household.
For the villagers, who are demanding a "fairer" price based on each household's respective acreage, the flat sums offered are inadequate. They also note that many of the residents who agreed to eventually give up their land in the 1975 inventory were coerced into doing so through the strong-arm tactics of Suharto's New Order regime, and that the price agreed on was much lower than the market price. The villagers have also denounced the use of police, soldiers and public order officers to notify residents about the relocation and compensation, saying it verges on intimidation.
For its part, the government argues that the deal is a generous one. The Public Works and Housing Ministry says the money being offered to the upper-tier villagers is sufficient to buy a 400-square-meter plot of arable land, build a 36-square-meter house, and cover food and living expenses for six months.
But in Cipaku, there's a third group of residents, comprising a quarter of the village's households, or 550 people, who have not been offered any compensation, despite ostensibly qualifying for the lower-tier payout under the presidential regulation's rather vague definition of "other residents in the area of the Jatigede reservoir not referred to" in the 1975 inventory.
Delay danger
For the government, there is a very real concern that the scheduled flooding of the reservoir will be delayed, denting the Joko administration's already battered reputation for not being able to get much-needed infrastructure projects off the ground. Protests by the Cipaku villagers last November forced the administration, just weeks into the new president's term in office, to hold off on the flooding that month.
Joko has experience dealing with a similar issue, though not on the same scale. While governor of Jakarta, he initiated a project to evict squatters from around the heavily silted Pluit polder, as part of efforts to bolster the city's flood defenses. However, he left the execution of the project to his deputy, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is now the governor and who drew a firestorm of criticism and condemnation from the squatters and his political opponents.
For Joko, the Jatigede challenge appears less taxing, observers say; there is increasing public expectation for major infrastructure projects to finally kick off, and the benefits of the new reservoir promise to vastly outweigh any short-term fallout.
As the inhabitants of Cipaku brace for what could be their last week in the only home most of them have ever known, Joko's ambitious infrastructure push hangs in the balance.