Adil Amrullah

In Indonesia’s villages, where over 125 million of the citizens in this, the world’s fifth largest nation live, people generally look to the Lura (the government-appointed headman) or others above them to decide what should be done. Adil Amrullah grew up in one such village two hours outside Surabaya.

He returned there in the early 1980s intent on helping his neighbors escape poverty and hunger by strengthening their ability to take their own initiatives. He gradually learned how to release their energy and confidence through strengthening existing micro community and neighborhood groups, groups so local that they are largely invisible to outsiders and have remained independent and vital.

The results in the villages where he has been working are extraordinary. Local groups involving over 500 of the poor are producing detergent, electricity, upscale bamboo furniture, embroidery, and a variety of agricultural goods and other services. Whereas traditionally a 1,000 rupiah loan taken out in the morning would have to be repaid as Rps 1,200 that same evening (20 percent interest for twelve hours), an alternative citizen lending program now charges 5 percent a month plus 5 percent required savings. Women and children are chief beneficiaries of many of these new programs. And the results of his work are already apparent in the improvement of the nutritional standards and overall health of the villagers.

These specific results are important, but Adil’s primary objective, and the chief importance of his work, are far more powerful and sweeping. He has learned how to unlock the democratic genie in a manner that fits the group-oriented, far from individualistic traditional culture of Java. He has learned how to do so in a way that also fits Indonesia’s contemporary realities. And he is now learning how to generalize and spread the methodology he learned through years of trial and error.

Adil’s decentralist, respectful, successful approach is a beacon for others, especially young people looking for a new model. Students and others who care, notably from the Islamic Students’ Association, have increasingly been coming to see and learn from Adil’s model. In response, he has started giving training programs. Twenty-five of the first 130 people who came to his initial three courses are now at work in their own areas. He has modified his approach for regions where he or other workers are not children of that soil but visitors helping respected local leaders succeed. He has also just created a new Surabaya-based voluntary organization to further energize the spread of this respectfully democratic grassroots movement.


The best independence and development leaders have long known that success turns on enabling people to take charge. It is common to find areas with the same resources and the same policies right next to one another but where one is moving ahead smartly and the other is stagnating.

Probably right from his college years in the late 1970s, when he founded the questioning student group, Reflexi, Adil has had this core insight, the vision to imagine letting this force loose, and the value-driven determination and unpretentious practicality to work through the specifics. He learned from early mistakes, e.g., that the village could not return to old forms. And that the abstract methods of discussion he learned in college were not right for the Thursday evening “yasinan Koran” discussion group. Adil’s listening and iterative experimenting may be producing a key that can help unlock much more of the respectful democratic force essential to accelerating development on Java.