When Land Reform Becomes Elite Capture: A Human Rights Failure in Indonesia’s GTRA -By Farah Fariha Putri, SH, MH

The purpose of land reform is suppused to be correction. But in Indonesia, this charge is increasingly leveled against it. Introduced by Agrarian Reform Task Force (GTRA/ Gugus Tugas Reformasi Agraria) Indonesia’s land reform programme was designed to apportion farmland to those who need it most. First, it promised on paper that there would be justice. But too often in practice, just as the case elsewhere, those who are richer and more powerful start stealing the marches off your plate It’s not because their determination wasn’t firm enough, But rather because their system is designed to let them win every time.

From different parts of the country come reports that land handed out under the reform schemes has gone into the hands of local elites, business people, those linked to politics and administration. Meantime old beneficiaries remain marginalized, and are fastened in a downward spiral of landlessness. What was supposed to correct the policy has become a channel thronged with its predators

This phenomenon has a name : elite capture. Elite capture is not simply corruption; it is the systematic removal of public resource s into the hands of those who already control local power structures. In the context of land reform, it is particularly devastating. Land is not just an asset it is life, identity and sustenance. When redistribution goes wrong, generations suffer

The trouble with Indonesia’s reform process lies in its structure: The channels for targeting are feeble and verification, superficial; at the local level where decisions about redistribution are often taken, governance structures tend to be heavily susceptible to influence. Without tough standards, reform itself becomes a commodity. In unequal societies, what end up commodified is rarely good for the poor. And the result of all this is inversion: the path which promised to dismantle inequality now legitimizes it.

This reversals simply underscores one more human rights failure. There are clear mandates in international law. The right to an adequate standard of living, to include both land and resources, is embodied in global human rights frameworks. The rights of peasants and people working on the land, as endorsed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, stress that access to land is integral to fair and dignified existence. But when the land allocated to those in need for their survival gets diverted into the hands of the powerful, these rights not only disappear, they are violated.

The Indonesian example also exposes a discomfiting tension at the heart of development policy. Land reform is often lodged within inclusive growth, as a means to empower communities and reduce poverty. But when local elites capture the process, development becomes extraction rather than inclusion. The outcome is not to redistribute opportunity, but to concentrate advantage.

This is not unique to Indonesia. Land reform programmes all around the world have been bedevilled by such distortions. But the sheer scale of Indonesia’s problems, where land lies at the heart of social and economic life, ensures that the consequences are more intense. With millions of people dependent on agriculture and rural based work, unsound reform cannot be treated as a minor matter. It calls the entire structure into question.

This is not a matter the government can afford to dismiss as a mere bureaucratic oversight. It is a matter of legitimacy.

Reforms must begin with transparency. Processes for selecting beneficiaries should be open to the public, verifiable and subject to independent oversight. Data should be open, not subject to control. Civil society must be enabled to watch and oppose allocations. Without oversight capture flourishes.

Next, the standard for validation must be substantive–not procedural. It is not enough to get land out quickly, the province to which it belongs must be properly assigned. This calls for a strict accounting of who is genuinely qualified, by guidelines capable of being applied and enforced, which give priority to those without land and given the least opportunity.

Instead, accountability mixtures must develop.Such malfeasance must get faulted–not only for the middlemen but also for those officials who make or tolerate it.So even though reform is announced, without law it becomes empty rhetoric. Now at last, land reform must move back to the centre of the stage as a human rights duty, not just an option for policy. That means that national programmes accord with international standards. To make certain that the redistribution of wealth does, not harm but advance social justice. The costs of messing things up could hardly be greater.Abolishing inequality is one of the most powerful cards a state can play. But it has also been one of the most perverted. If present trends in Indonesia’s program continue, agrarian reform would be not an example of how one thing can go from bad to better, but rather how a scheme designed to help the poor and underprivileged ends up placing more power in hands even than before. And that is not reform. It is the great reversal of fortunes: redistribution in reverse. Since when agrarian reform becomes a matter for the elite, justice is not frustrated but doomed.

Farah Fariha Putri, SH, MH

Alumni of The Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Member of Law Firm Victorious Indonesia