THE PADDY FIELD THAT COULDN’T PRODUCE RICE: DEVELOPMENT AND IMPOVERISMENT IN NORTHERN AREA OF BEKASI

Abstract

The issues of development in Indonesia is always interesting to be studied, especially on the impact of development to the society. This article tries to picture how the development in the Bekasi regency has changed the face of Bekasi fundamentally, from an agricultural area into residential and industrial area, as well as its impact to the society. Specifically, this article shall depict about the northern region of Bekasi. The regency of Bekasi, which is very strategic due to its direct shared border with Jakarta, in addition of the land area that is still very vast, has made Bekasi as the target of residential and industrial development, especially in the southern area of Bekasi. The needs of housing from the workers in the eastern area of Jakarta and Bekasi as well as the price of the land that is still cheap, has made the northern region of Bekasi as the favorite option for housing. This has encouraged the conversion of land use from farming land into housing areas that is uncontrollable. The development that was championed as the surefire solution to break the chain of poverty has instead backfired to become the cause of an increasingly more structural kind of poverty in the society, as it didn’t just eliminated the livelihood of the people, but also caused an ecological disaster that is uncontrollable, which in the end becomes a catastrophe to human kind.