Gus Krobo

Gusti Ketut Puriartha (Gus Krobo), a Balinese deeply concerned about the inequities of resource allocation in Indonesia, is building a popular movement for citizen participation in development planning.

Gus Krobo is building a citizen forum to guide and monitor the way the government allocates and uses resources for development. The forum consists of a community organizing component, which attracts citizens by sparking grassroots dialogue and research into local development needs, and a policy and advocacy component, which promotes transparency by publicizing government data on development programs, budgets, and expenditures. The community forum, in which people analyze their real needs and decide how they should be addressed, is a powerful means to close the gap between development programs initiated at the district, provincial, or national level, and the reality of what is needed at the village level. To make the forum more effective, Gus Krobo is training leaders in the village to voice the needs and decisions of their communities, to share information and common problems and successes with other villages, and to improve their bargaining position by building a national network. Through all these efforts, Gus Krobo is promoting a critical awareness of development issues. His model is replicable in other regions seeking to overcome a culture of silence and apathy fostered by years of authoritarian rule.

Like many famous tourist destinations around the world, Bali is a microcosm born of the collisions that happen when natural beauty, traditional culture, modernity, big money, and greed all enter the same orbit. In the 1970s and 80s, the hotel and resort industry remade significant portions of Bali into a tourist paradise. Word spread and people flocked to the island from around the world. Countless support industries that accompany big tourism–transport, handicrafts, scuba diving, cafés, galleries–took shape. The boom had begun, the universe was expanding, and the government quickly comprehended the value of controlling one of the leading international tourist destinations.
And so, too, began Bali's development conundrum. Despite the apparent openness of Bali and its economic success, it remained one island in a nation that was dominated by an authoritarian leader, run largely by the military, and beset with poverty. Perhaps more so than elsewhere, the official view of development in Bali had less to do with the Indonesian people who lived there than with the paying guests attracted to the island. Development meant land for resorts, roads, and water systems to serve the guests, as well as patronage to local leaders who could prevent the people from upsetting Bali's official destiny as a foreign-exchange earner. The resorts had swimming pools, hot tubs, and Jacuzzis, while most villages lacked running water. In the tourist hubs, there seemed to be no end to jobs as guides, hawkers, or hotel help, while farmers in the countryside could barely make ends meet. As profits trickled down–enticing young Balinese away from their villages–a skewed sense of prosperity took hold, and any attempts to voice disagreement or dissatisfaction were quickly muffled by all those who were raking in the tourist dollars.
But now Indonesia is undergoing change. The New Order regime has ended and citizen organizations have more freedom than ever to start looking into the corruption and disparities of the official development programs. The spirit of reform has manifested itself in the promising concept of local autonomy, by which citizens and their communities will have some say about the composition and programs of the local government. Now is the opportune time to raise public awareness about the rights and potential involvement of citizens in development planning.

Building upon links he established in traditional villages throughout Bali, Gus Krobo began to initiate discussions centered on specific development issues like access to water and electricity. Because the shape of the discussion forum was as important to him as the topic, he based the idea of the community forum on traditional institutions in the villages of Tenganan and Seruya. He noted that these two villages were unusual in that they had maintained traditional beliefs and institutions for centuries by isolating and protecting themselves from the influences of Balinese monarchies, colonial governments, and the New Order regime. Their community decision-making institutions were democratic, with men and women of all castes participating equally. Using the leadership model of these two villages, Gus Krobo's organization–Manikaya Kauci–has so far established community forums in 60 of the 1,340 traditional villages in Bali.
The discussions he initiates involve all village sectors in reaching consensus on critical needs unmet or overlooked by development programs designed for the village by people who lack a clear understanding of what exactly villages need. Gus Krobo trains facilitators from the village to guide discussions and lead their communities in agreeing upon and articulating concrete recommendations. To aid in this process, Gus Krobo provides information about development programs currently in use, including budgets, to the forum leaders, and trains them to guide their community through a process of participatory social mapping. Besides using all this information as a database, the results of the mapping and the shortcomings of current programs are used to help develop plans for the village that can then be presented to the district government. Seeing the tremendous benefit of linking communities, Gus Krobo encourages villagers to share information and perspectives through bulletins and newsletters, which he trains villagers to produce and distribute to other villages, as well as to government officers and business leaders.
Further, Gus Krobo's organization trains villagers to guide neighboring villages through the process of developing structure and skills. Later this year, he and his staff will hold a workshop in four districts in Bali as an initial step in introducing their work in each of the almost 80 villages of those districts. He will also introduce the alternative media to those communities. Gus Krobo and his organization will soon convene a congress of all traditional villages of Bali to strengthen a national association of such villages and to assert greater pressure upon the government to honor citizen input in designing and implementing development programs at the village level.

Gus Krobo led a carefree lifestyle characteristic of Balinese youth growing up during the tourist boom of the 1970s and 80s. When he was in his third semester at the university, though, he was greatly influenced by a senior classmate. Through discussions with this classmate and through his own intensive reading, Gus Krobo began to think more deeply about social inequalities and injustices, and the oppression of the common people by those in power. He could easily relate the ideas he was reading about to the realities he knew in Bali. The discussions, which grew to include other friends, resulted in a study group. Members of the group analyzed the sociopolitical situation and undertook activities to defend and advocate for oppressed communities.
In 1992, after Gus Krobo and other members of the study group had graduated from university, they established Manikaya Kauci, the first advocacy organization in Bali, to advance their work. The organization also served as a legal aid society, which garnered the respect of government and citizen groups. While the work Gus Krobo and his classmates began during the New Order regime involved risk, they were committed to realizing their vision of democracy. Through a system of apprenticeship and informal leadership training, Gus Krobo is developing the next generation of young social changemakers. Some of these young leaders, including Ashoka Fellow Made Indra, have made important contributions to Indonesia's emerging democracy.