FORGOTTEN VILLAGES? THE EFFECTS OF THE CRISIS IN RURAL JAVA AND THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT

Tulisan ini berusaha menganalisis dua hal pokok, yakni dampak krisis di perdesaan Jawa dan respons pemerintah lokal/pemerintahan desa terhadap krisis moneter. Secara tegas dikatakan bahwa masyarakat perdesaan Jawa heterogen dan penuh dengan variasi dan ketidaksamaan. Oleh karena itu,dampak krisis moneter di desajuga sangat bervariasi tergantung pada wilayah, status sosial ekonomi, pekerjaan, dan sistem ekonomi. Karena krisis,ada kelompok masyarakat yang "menang" (diuntungkan) yaitu kelompok yang mempunyai akses terhadap sumber daya dan ada kelompok yang "kalah" (dirugikan) yaitu kelompok masyarakat miskin. Selama krisis, berbagai institusi tradisional yang berfungsi sebagai social security, seperti gotong-royong dan solidaritas sosial lainnya tidak berperan besar. Bahkan, pemerintah lokal/pemerintahan desa pun tidak melakukan upaya maksimal dalam menghadapinya. Dalam kenyataannya,peran aktivitas individual jauh lebih besar dibandingkan dengan aktivitas kolektif.


Introduction
The anthropologist Jellinek stated that the effects of the crisis, whichhitIndonesiaa year before, did not affect rural people that much. On behalf of the World Bank,she had carried out a rapid appraisalof the effects of the crisis in Indonesia in four places. According toher,the effects of the crisis were much worse in the cities (Kompas, 10 February, 1999).At thebeginningof thecrisis (1997/1998), Harmoko (the spokesman of parliament and prominent member of Golkar) visitedsome ruralareas inCentral spoke to village officials and had dinner1 in one of the visited villages. The dinner was well prepared and after his visit, Harmoko stated in interviews on the television and innews articles that the situationinthe ruralareas was not so bad because he had a good meal, implying that much food was available inthe villages.

Bothstatements of Jellinek and
Harmoko are indicative for the attitude of the Indonesian government and a number of academics in respect to the crisis. In the dominant government discourse in Indonesia, villages are often regarded as homo¬ geneous and harmonious communities,able to take care for its weaker members by gotong royong and other traditional arrangements of solidarity and mutual help. In fact, this stereotypical view has highly blinded government employees andintellectuals for thehardships of the rural poor and the existing inequalities, like inequalities between regions, economic sectors, classes and within villages. It is crucial to study this diversity on the local level to understandthe differentialeffects of the crisis and the -often misplacedresponses of the government on its effects.
Inour view, during the crisis, government concern,analysis and policies have been much more focusedif focused at allon cities than on rural areas. This is to a certainextent understandable as in-depth studies of the crisis were not made and hardly any information or the effect of the crisis was available. The central government directed its attention mainly on the huge urban problemsasmassunemployment, budget deficits, firm bankruptcy and restructuring of the banking sector. The cause of this lack of concern for rural areas in Indonesia,was the lack of reliable informationof these areas.Onthe local level, the government administrative systems were therefore not equipped and not able to anticipate and fight the crisis.
Our articlewillpresent the case of two poor villages in Java du¬ ring the crisis and show the differential effects of the crisis for different categories of people within these villages. The article is based on long periods of anthropological fieldwork's during the crisis and offers in-Forgotten Villages? The Effectsof the Crisis in Rural Jam depthdataaboutpoverty,copying strategies, labour and migration and the role of the local govern¬ ment.2 The study of Kutanegara took place in the village of Sriharjo, Central Java,3 while Nooteboom's study was carried out inKrajan,4 a remote village in Bondowoso, East Java. Sriharjo is an example of a lowland village with mainly commercialised agriculture, an excluded majority from access to land and with a lot of urban workers. Land owner¬ shipinSriharjooftenhasmoreand more a symbolic function than a production function. Krajan is an example of those Indonesian upland villages which are more remote, more villagers withdirect and indirectaccess to landandwithlessurbanworkers. Although Krajan is incorporated in the market, subsistence production is still important. Long-term research is really needed to understand the impact of the crisis on the local level. Foster states: "Long term participant observation [...] can yield understanding of social change that issimply not possible in any other way" (Foster, 1979). Moreover, especially inJava, it is difficult to gather in-depth informationabout difficulties and hardships in life. As, during a survey people do not easily talk about these sensitive subjects.This article therefore tries to offer an 'inside' view of the crisis. It deals with four major subjects: 1) the question about the nature of the crisis and local perceptions and experiences of the crisis, 2) the changes inpovertyand inequality during the crisis 3) changes in labour and migration and 4) the role of the local government in respondingto the crisis.

The Crisis inIndonesia
Itcan be said, that the crisis in Indonesia took place at three different levels and at the same time. Three crises can be distinguished: 1)acurrency crisis, 2) a food crisis and 3) a political crisis. These crises had several interrelated causes and reasons, which cannot be dealt with in detail in this article, as we want focus especially on the local level effects. Inthe following, the three crises will be described briefly. 1) The currency crisis started in July 1997with slightly deterio¬ rating exchange rates devalu¬ ating faster between Septem¬ ber andNovember 1997.At the beginningof January 1998,the Rupiah had already devalu¬ ated 100per cent (Figure 1).In the same month, the Rupiah cameinafree fall. Ina response on this devaluation, inflation got challengedandfood prices started to rise.The first rise of basic food prices,which isim¬ portant for ruralpopu-lations, started afterOctober 1997 (Fig¬ ure2). Inthe village of Krajan, villagers were aware of rising prices, but really started to worry about the food prices during the Ramadhan (Decem¬ ber/January 1997/1998) (Fig¬ ure 3). InSriharjo this process started somewhat earlier, whichhasa greater proportion of its population working in the urbansector. 2) The food crisis started already with the effects of El Nifto, which caused droughts and forest fires. Production of rice started to fall and in 1998 the rice production declined with nearly 10percent in1998com¬ pared with the 1996 level   (FAO, 1998 But, more structural reasons can bementioned as well. Inthe villages, the step down of Suharto as suchdidnotimpress most villagers. In Krajan (East Java) for instance, it look more thanthree daysbeforethe majority of the population realised at all that Suharto had stepped down indeed.And whenvillagers heard the news, they were not excited.
In their life world, Jakarta is far away and villagers infact did not expect much from the national government in solving their pro¬ blems. In Srihaijo (Central Java), villagers were also not that impressed by the news, but the reasons were different. Invillagers perceptions, Jakarta is geo¬ graphically not so far away, but according to them, national politics are not that relevant for their lives.

The Crisis inRural Indonesia
In 1996, the Australian economist Hal Hill wrote an optimistic book about the modernisation and development of the Indonesian economy: "The Indonesian economy since 1966: Asia's emerging Giant". His analyses of the Indonesian economy included a core section onagriculturaldevelopments. He states that the New Order (Orde Baru) regime has been successful increatingruraldevelopment and improving rural people's livelihoods. However, he overlooked that the attention of the Orde Baru regime for rural areas has been declining. Till the beginning of the nineties, rural Indonesiahashadrelativelymuch attention from the government. Thismattermaterialisedinaseries of rural development programs liketireGreenRevolutionpolicies, the Colt Revolution, road construction projects, electricity, and the development of a smallscaleindustry.Thiscreatedarapid agricultural development, and also put astrainonemployment.5 While agricultural production increased, inequality grew, employment for landlessvillagers decreased and a growingnumber of youngvillagers startedto work in the cities. Another effect of all these developments was that villages started to become less isolated and partly urbanised.
Many rural areas in Java started to look like desa kota or rurban regions (McGee, et. al., 1997) and urbanandruraleconomies started to merge. Therefore, when urbanised Java got affectedbythe severe crisis of 1997/98, rural areas were basicallyaffectedalike and at the same time. Even in remote rural areasinside and outside Java-the crisis was felt forcefully.
For this article, it is important to note the effects of the crisis on the poor in these rural areas. Contrarytosomeexpectations,the poor are affected most by the crisis. Levinsohn et. al. (1999) for instance state in a recent paper about the 97/98 crisis: "We find that thepoorhaveindeedbeenhit hardest. Just how hard the poor have been hit, though, depends crucially on where the household lives,whether the household isin rural or urban area, andjust how the cost of living index is computed.What isclear isthat the notion that the very poor are so poor as to be insulated form international shocks is simply wrong. Rather, inthe Indonesian case, the very poor appear the most vulnerable." As we focus on the rural poor in this paper, poverty studies like that of Levinsohnet.al. areinterestingbut sometimes raise more questions thananswers.Thepresentationof quantitative data alone does not tellusmuchabout the nature and experience of poverty. We found in our research for instance that accordingtopovertydefinitionsof localpeople,the very poor arenot those villagers who lacksufficient income,but those who arenotable to take placeintheritualexchange economy of villagers anymore. Added to this, structural categories of poor are those who are kasihan (pitiful) like widows without help and/or old without PandeMadeKutanegaraand Gerben Nooleboom children or without being cared for. In order to understand the dynamics of poverty,we therefore need a more differentiated and dynamic approach. Most poverty studies donot telluswho the poor are and why they are poor. Therefore, we make inthis article a combination of poverty studies andmoredynamic studiesdealing with vulnerable poor like social security studies.
Most poverty studies, like those of for instance the World Bank,are quitestatic.Definitions, like a poverty line of one dollar a day, do not make much sense on the locallevelandina situationof arapiddevaluationof thenational currency.SingarimbunandPenny {1973) was among the first Indonesians to do poverty researchinIndonesiaand tried to deal with the problemof inflation by using rice as a definition of poverty. According to him, the very poor are those with incomes less than 240 kg rice equivalent/ capita/year andthepoorare those who haveanincomeless than320 kgof rice.Hisdefinition,although an improvement at that time, remains rather static and income oriented. A social security approachmigiht help to solve this problem.Inour opinion, the crux of the matter inpoverty isthe lack of access to resources. F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann state: "poverty or wealth refers to the economic condition measured by lack of ownership or command over resources and monetary incomes. Social security refers to the conversion of resources into actually (un)fulfilled social securityneeds" (Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann, 1994). Socialsecurity studies arebroader and more dynamic than poverty studies inthe sense that they study not only the material possessions of people, but their socially secured (potential) access to resources too. Amartya Sen, who did many poverty studies did somethingsimilar indealingwith the limitations of poverty studies by introducing the concept of entitlements (Sen, 1977(Sen, , 1992. He states that it is not the actual positionof materialwealthwhich makes people poor, but the lack entitlements to resources. Added to this, we think it is important to look at the relationaldimensionof poverty. As indicated by local people,social isolationfor themis the utmost problem of poverty (Townsend,1993).Isolatedpeople have less access to information, power, labour opportunities, networks,andsystems of support andredistributionwhichhavethe potential of offering (some) security. Being poor (having no possessions), lacking access to resources and being excluded from redistribution mechanisms as social security arrangements makes people much more vulnerable for economic crises. These aspects of poverty and vulnerability are at the centre of our analysis in this article, which deals with the effects of the crisis inIndonesia.

Government Policies
At the beginning of the crisis, the government was very hesitant to take action. They still seemed tobelievethat the ruralareaswere not affected and could cope with the difficulties. Soeharto said on televisiona few monthsbeforehis fall that the crisis would soon be over. ("Badai pasti berlalu"; "The storm will soon be over",). Governmental responses on the crisis were not effective and did havenothingto do withthe causes of thecrisis.As for instancethe call to Cinta Rupiah (love your own currency), to give gold for strengthening the currency, distribute rice packages (nasi bungkus) and the public exchange of US dollars for Rupiah by government and rich people. In Augustus 1998, when the crisis continued and its severe effects could no longer be neglected, Social Safety Net programs (JPS Jaring Pengaman Sosial) became effective. These programs were designed to lessen the negative social effects of the crisis. Among these programswere:l) Programs for enhancingfoodsecurity (cheap rice, subsidies for sembako, increased Bulog interventions, etc.), 2) employment creation programs, 3) credit support programs for small and medium enterprises, 4) social protection programs for education and health.Inthenextsections,wewill describe indetail for Sriharjo and Krajanwhat the effects of the crisis were for different groups andhow effective these policies in the villages were.
2 The Crisis inSriharjo, Central Java a. Typicality's of Sriharjo's Economy Sriharjo lies at the foot of the limestonehills(PegununganSewu) that start from the Indian Ocean at South Central Java. It is sited a 25 kilometresSouthof Yogyakarta onthe roadtoGunungKidulclose to the Imogiri cemeteries where the Sultans of Yogyakarta have been buried for centuries. Desa Sriharjo consists of a fertile lowland part with irrigated rice fields and a barren upland part. The village population counts around9300 inhabitantsscattered over 13 hamlets. The limestone hills make up 60 per cent of the village area and host 30 per cent of the population. The lower part consists of 40 per cent of the total area with 70 per cent of the population.Thehillypartismuch moreisolatedandpoorer than the lower part. Their inhabitants are usually referredto aswonggunung (mountain people) which has the negative connotation of being backward, uneducated and traditional, while the inhabitants of thelower part are referredtoas wong ngare (lowland people) which has a very positive meaning.
The higher part of Sriharjo produces cassava, maize, and somebananasfor subsistence,teak wood, some chilly, and other vegetables for the local and regional market. The irrigated lowlandpartproducesrice,maize, soybean, and vegetables for the market.
As inallother partsof lowland Java, transport facilities of lower Sriharjoare very good.Becauseof this manyvillagers travelbackand forth their work in Yogyakarta every day. Where as most of the wonggunung bybike,most of the wong ngare by motorcycle. Contrary to tire early New Order pears (1969), when all villagers worked in rural areas and were poor (seeSingarimbunandPenny, 1973), nowadays the majority of the villagers derive their main incomefromthecityandarebetter off. Then is, however, still much poverty inSriharjo. In1969-1970 Penny studied the widespread poverty inSriharjo,andpublished the first Indonesian book on this subject (Singarimbun and Penny, 1973).Fromthat time on, the rural development programs which were implemented by The New Order started to increase the economic conditions inrural Java and therefore, poverty started to decline slowly. A restudy conductedbySingarimbunin1989 (Singarimbun, 1996)  Source : 1969: & 1989: : from Singarimbun, 1993: 1999:from data survey 1999.
to 53 per cent.6 Villagers did not sell their land, but children of smallholders were not able to inherit or buy anything. As employment in agriculture decreased also, most of the villagers nowadays have lost access to land.This process lies at the basis of the increased migrationto the bigcities and the increasedimportanceof non-farm activities for village livelihood. Thepoor peopleof Srihaijocan be found among those who have no access to land and who lack sufficient economic and social capital. But the really poor are those categories of people who lack sufficient networks of family members as well. As widows, widows/widowers without children or with very small children, old people without children and handicapped. Or those who are notable to get access to other sources of income like: agricultural labourer, harvest labourer, becak driver, construc¬ tion worker, etc. But, if these categories of people don't have access to income, they still can be relativelywelloff if they are cared for by more affluent relatives or village members. Very often, social relations make the difference between the rich and the poor.
Contrary to the past, not the full-time farmers are the well off people of Sriharjo anymore, but those who combine fanning with non-farming activities, like teachers, army officials, traders, and civil servants.

b. Perceptions of the Crisis
At the beginning of the crisis, villagers constantly chatted about the crisis. For example, during arisan (rotatingsaving groups), at village meetings and at the ronda (night watch) the topic and its causes was discussed over and over again. Villagers did not understand where krismon 7 came from and they saw itas the source of all their problems in life. Like the loss of their job as a constructions andfabric worker in the cities, like budgetary problems, rising prices of basic needs,the priceof food, the rising prices of pesticides and fertiliser etc. In these discussions many different views concerning the crisis were expressed. According to some villagers, the events were severe, but according to others, they were easy to overcome. In general,villagers' opinions varied according to socio-economic and demographic factors such as status, occupation, age, and gender. Young people perceived krismon as a serious crisis, while on the contrary, the older generationperceived the crises as a normal condition of rural life. According to the older villagers a crisis isarealfamine whennofood of good quality is available. The old generation saw the 1998crisis only as little turmoil, as basic needswere stillavailable although expensive.Therefore, they regard the crisis in1998 only as a normal condition of village life. In their lives, they had been hit by worse crises before. For them, the availability of food is the main indicator for a crisis. Inthe 1930's, during the world economic crisis (villagers call this the missed era, jaman meleset,)8 they suffered so badly from famine that they ate the skin of cassava, the roots of banana threes and grassroots. During the Japanese occupation, people suffered even more and died of starvation. During the revolutionary years of 1945-1950, food availability was limited. At the end of the Old Order or the beginning of the New Order (1965), the most recent crisis occurred. That one is still perceived as being much worse than the 1998 one. The younger generation however, who has never suffered form any crisis or famine before, regards this crisis as very bad. For the younger generations not only the lack of good food means crisis, but the decline of other consumption goodscigarettes,sweets etcas well.
Thesocio-economic status also influences the view on the nature of the crisis. Middle to upper classes realisedthey stillcould do quite well. For the lower classes, itwas veryhardto accept that they had to economise on the quality and the quantity of food. In contrast to the lower classes, the middle and upper class seemed however more worried about the crisis. Although they were less affected, the middle and higher classes tended to discuss much more about the crisis. The lower classeshowever,were moresilent and oftenseemed to think itbeing less important to express their demands.9 Betweenmenandwomen also different perspectives onthe crisis exist. In general, women, encountered, went through ...etc. more difficulties during the crisis andtherefore,their perceptionson the crisis differ from men's. But this does not count for women with an independent income. For instance, households where the woman was making embroidery did better than thoseunder same conditionswho was not.

Responses
The crisis caused most difficulties for the poorer people of Sriharjo. But also for those peoplewho depend only onnonfarm activities, the crisis turned out to be a major setback as well. At the beginning of the crisis, nearlyallconstructionwork in the cities stopped, many factories went bankrupt and work opportunities decreased severely.
Those who worked in the cities suddenly lost their source of income and some of them return to the village. At the beginning of the crisis, more than 100 people who worked in the industries of Bandung, Bogor and Jakarta in came back to Sriharjo. Only, around 10 per cent of them were female. Most women worked as domestic helpers or in the textile industry didnot lose their jobs. In general, domestic servants were not fired after the crisis and those working in the textile industry were protected by one of managers who originated from Sriharjo. Therefore, most of the women who migrated to did not return. Also, more than 200 villagers who worked as construction workers and becak drivers inand aroundYogyakarta and were travelling to and forth Sriharjo everyday, lost their job and didn't go to Yogyakarta anymore.Somevillagers,who lost their jobs in the cities, were not coming back to the village, but found other work. In general migrants returnedto the village if they could not do anything else.
At first these returnees from the bigcities were not so obvious and seemed not at ease in the village. They at first did not engage in many activities inthe village, but after some weeks, they started to assist with any kind of work, like cutting grass, wage labouring, fishing, making embroidery, and trading birds. Some time later, most of them started to go back to the cities again and found some kind of a job. For the commuters, those who stayed at home, the situation was different. They straightaway took up whatever work available in the village becausethey were already usedto combineruralactivities withtheir urban work. Both groups constantly tried to get information aboutjob possibilitiesfromfriends and relatives and some of them indeed got a new job soon. Those who had established good networks of social relationships were more successful than those who were operating more individually. The lower class constructionworkers for instance, who usedto work for a broker got quicker work again than skilled construction workers operating individually.Somehowever,who had difficulties finding a similar job like they had before were forced to change from urbanwork to ruralwork (buruhsrabutan) and turned for instance to cut sugarcane, milking cows, cutting grass, etc. This meant a real drop instatus, and returns from labour were not even sufficient for feeding a family.10 To survive, they were forced to change their way of live totally.They started to mix rice with tiwul (low quality food made from dried cassava) and ate this without any side dish like tempe, tahu, fish or egg. They stopped using sugar for tea, changed to cheap -sometimes selfmadecigarettes, and could use only a little bit cheap of cooking oil. Also less poor families experienced problems with food for their children. Most children had never eaten tiwul dried cassava and were crying if they had to eat that. Added to this, there were also other minor complaints of children about the food, like stomach problems, about hungry feelings (as cassava doesnotgive afull feeling) and the bad smell of cheap rice. Another widow said: "anak-anak saya sekarang tidak pernah dapat uang jajan" (My children nowadays never get money to buy snacks). In one hamlet, the villagers complained to the head of the hamlet about the peddlers who were selling small snacks like ice andbakso. Everytime the peddlers entered the village, children startedto cry andtobegfor money to buy a snack. To lessen the economic pressureof hisfamilies, the head of the hamlet forbid the peddlers to enter the hamlet everyday. Since then, they were only allowed to enter the hamlet two times a week.
Another difficulty for poor people during the crisis was meeting the expectations of exchanging gifts (sumbangan) at funerals andweddings.They were afraid to slop giving these gifts in fear of social exclusion, of gossip and of being called greedy or asocial. They tried in all possible ways to grasp money to maintain the ritual exchange networks of society at large.
During the crisis, some villagers who had good access to resources like land, cattle and other resources were able to improve their position. People who earned a salary out of agriculture and combined this with income out of non-farm activities benefited most. One household for instance, which runs a warung and also rents half a hectare sawah became rich becauseof risingpaddypricesand an increased income out of the waning. At the beginning of the crisis, tire profit out of the waning was very high, because they sold stocks thatwereboughtatamuch lower price before the crisis. Due to thecrisis they couldrebuilt their houses and buy some furniture likea sofa,gas stove,etc. Villagers inhigher areas of Sriharjowhohad cattle benefited also from the rising prices by selling some of their cows to buy a second hand motor cycle. More than 20 people soldcatties andmanymotorcycles entered the village. These motorcycleswere not onlybought for working outside Sriharjo but also for the social status attached to havingone.
The impact of the crisis is also regionally differentiated and differs in several parts of the village. In the higher part of Sriharjo, which is more isolated, subsistence oriented andpoor,the peopledidnotpaymoreattention to the crisis than those who lived elsewhere although they were harder hit.Inthat time, they tried to suffice their basic needs (simple food only). They more easily changedtheir consumptionto the low quality food (tiwul). The opposite took place in Miri, the lower part of Sriharjo, which is more open and market oriented. Thepeople there paidmuchmore attention to the crisis in daily conversations because they had a lotmore expenses and needs like, electricity bills,education,health, etc. and complained all the time althoughmanywere hitlesshard. Ifpeopleare talkinga lotaboutthe crisis that does not indicate anything about being affected by the crisis.Thepeoplefrom the hilly part had never been able to get access to good health care and education and yet adapted more quietly.
d. The Role of the (Local) Government inFightingthe Crisis Did the local government (villageheadsandvillage officials) give good notice to the crisis? When I asked government employees during the crisis in 1998about what they did about it, they answered: "The crisis is not sosevere inthe villages compared to the situationinthe cities.Pitiful are those who cannot eat in the cities. For us here in the villages the situationisreasonable.We can still pick leaves freely for adding to our food". They also reported inthese words about the situation in the village to the regional government officials. They believed themselves to a certain extent that in their own villages not many people were affected. The neglect of the problems in their own villages has three reasons: 1) local village officials don't know much about poor peopleintheir ownvillages. They hardly ever meet them, and poverty in Java is relatively invisible.2) They were influenced by dominant discourses in the media and higher government echelons that depicted only the severe situation in the cities. 3) Local village officials in general are more oriented to serve the higher levels of the government than to serve villagers. Because of this, they were very busy with carrying out government programs and instructions from above and therefore were not capable to tackle specific problems and needs of villagers. The local village officials therefore didn't do much to enhance the living conditions of the localpoor.They never proposed new ideas or programs, and the government programs that were employed in fact more benefited the rural middleclass,not the poorestof the poor.
During the crisis, It seemed that the localgovernment did not pay much attention to the crisis. They just carried on with the routine jobs as being part of tire lowest bureaucracy system in Indonesia.Infact, they were busy indeedwith the routineprograms and in assisting the higher level officials (kecamatanandkabupaten). Buttherefore,they couldnotfocus onthevillage problems.The office of the village head (kantor kelurahan) was visited every day bygovernmentguestswho allhad to carry out importantthings.And PanaeMade Kutanegaraand Gerben Nootcboom of course, the lowest levelofficials were ready to serve their higher officials. But it took monthsbefore something was done about the impact of the crisis, whereas the localgovernment didnot take any initiatives. The crisis made painfully clear that the local government turned out to be an administrative unit instead of havinga governing function.
Duringthe crisis, the village of Sriharjo receivedseveral forms of aid to fight the impacts of crisis. This helpwas rather unorganised. Before the program from the government came, the village had already received help from non¬ government sources, like from religious institutions, private sector initiatives,the RedCross of Singapore, etc. This support was distributed on the basis of three different sets of data about the needy. Sometimes data from the village office were used, sometimes data from BKKBN (family planning),andsometimes from the Department of Social Welfare. Sometimes evena region was selected and only villagers of one hamlet got all the help both letting poor and rich members benefit. Poor people living in a richer region did not benefit. Unclear and unreliable data were the main reason for the many problemsrelatedtohelpprograms in the village. But also dormant and hidden conflicts, hierarchies and competitions between villagers came painfully to the fore. People started to be jealous to others from different hamlets, from different classes and especially within families and neighbourhoods. Youngsters organised three demonstrations in villages and asked the local government about the injustice of the distributionsystem.Becauseof these demonstrations, the local government decided to divide the helpequally over allfamilies,both poor and rich villagers got help. In this way, help only meant for the poor,was transferredpartly to the richer echelons of society.
Besides demonstrations the aid ledto some funny experiences.For instance, help from Singapore contained some luxury food like creamer, spaghetti sauce with spaghetti and some canned food. The villagers had never seen that food and were confused. Like the family of Pak Jeno, a poor household.They receivedonebox of food, and tried to cook it and they mixed everything together, but, in the end, never succeeded to eat that food. Later, the government offered cheap rice (sembako) for poor villagers at RplO,000.00 per 10 kg's. The village of Sriharjo received613 packets a monthand most of that aidwas meant for the hilly part of Sriharjo. That was a good idea, because in that part livedmostof the poor households. But,theheadof hamlet distributed that aid not only to the poorer households,but every household got a share of it.Eventually,every household received around 7 kilogram a month. The local government legitimised their decisionby stating that they were afraid of conflicts inthe village. A small amount of the cheap rice was distributed inlower part of Sriharjo. Since access to nonfarm activities inthat area ismore open, there are not many poor households. During the crisis however, most of them were affected. Nevertheless, they did not receive aid from the government, as they were not registered as poor households in the pre-crisis situation.
Inshort,inthe beginningof the crisis, programs were more about food (sembako) but later on, also other elements were included,like health, work and income generatingactivities.Totalhelp to Sriharjo,exceeded 200 million Rupiah, for several programs. Since the village administration had never received so much money before, one of the heads of the hamlets said that he did not understand that so much money was cominginto the village for he couldnotspent it.Hegot confused because he had not received informationabout aclear program with clear criteria. Some villagers expressed the feeling that the government wasted a lot of money, and misuse of funds by lower government officials became indeedpossible.
3. The Crisis inKrajan, East Java a. Typicality of Krajan's Economy The village of Krajanlies onthe slope of mountain Argopuro at a distance of 20 kilometres from Bondowoso town, East Java. The village has always been much more isolated than Sriharjo until recently the village roadhas been improved and irregular daily transport to Bondowosoor Besuki is available. Nevertheless, Krajan is located far from the big urban centres in Java. The first middlesized city is Jember at a 60 kilometres distance and little villagers have ever been there. Krajan has around 3400 inhabitants of whom the majority is poor and engages mainly in subsistence farming. As Krajanis situated onthe NorthEastof Java, the populationis fully Madurese. The village has been founded before 1850,longbefore the main Madurese migration waves to East-Java startedinthe beginning 20th century.

PandeMadeKutanegaraand Gerben Nooteboom
Desa Krajan lies at an altitude between800 and 1,100 meter and the terrain is hilly.The redladang soils inthe village are washed out and less fertile than most of those in rural Java, but they are more fertile than the limestone soils of higher Sriharjo.The few saioahs of Krajan however, are of much lower quality than those of Miri, lower Sriharjo. In the long dry season,no crops canbe plantedat allas the irrigationislimited.After the first rains,maize,rice,cassava and some vegetables are planted. These crops are mainly for subsistence purposes and are hardly commercialised and monelarised. After the harvest of maize, as a second (cash) crop, many farmers plant tobacco (for the domestic market). Due to the shortage of rain,the poor soils,tire limited use of technology, inputs andknowledge,the productionof crops are relativelylow inKrajan.
Due to these less favourable agricultural conditions, Krajan is like Sriharjoa village with a low agriculturalproductionbase. Only lower Sriharjo (Miri) has fertile sawah, but even there, rice productions are a bit lower because of problematic access to irrigation in the dry season. Therefore, both villages did not profit much from the positive effects of the crisis on agricultural production and export related crops.InKrajanonly a few farmers (less than one per cent) own enoughland to sell rice or corn on the market. Although Krajan is rich in cattle, most farmers who soldcowsneededthe profitdearly to buy rice, maize, or to pay off debts. The only other important non-agriculture based source of income is the making of besek (small bamboo baskets). Incomes out of the besek, however, are low and decreased during the crisis. Contrary to Sriharjo, migration rates are low11 and therefore, cash inflows from outside are not significant. Added to the weak production base of Krajan, is the insecurity in crop output. The harvests in dry land agriculture, are more fluctuating then those in irrigated agriculture. Farmers therefore are used to deal with fluctuations inincome and follow risk avoiding and investment extensive agricultural strategies. In Krajan, where irrigated plots are scarce, erratic rainfall, poor soils and tobacco production add to fluctuations in income. To a certain extent, people are used to these insecurities. But in Krajan this did not -contrary to the 11 Less than 5% of the population has a family member working somewhere else expectation (Wolters12)lead to collective village-wide arrange¬ ments to cover the risks of income fluctuation (Wolters, 1998).Oneof the conclusions of the research is that the insurance against these risks takes place individually and of the household level. Insurance against income fluctuations takes place by the means of saving (in gold, cows, andto a certain extent-social relations), by avoiding and spreading risks, by agricultural diversification (combiningdifferent crops andby the growingof subsistence crops), and by occupational pluralisms (the combination of different sources of income). Incontrast to Sriharjo, the possessionof land as production factors is very important in Krajan, where land has more and more a status function. Another difference isthe rate of villagers having access to land.Landownership inKrajanis slightly less unequal than in Sriharjo, but generally this conditionas unequalas anywhere in rural Java (Hart, et. al., 1989;Hefner, 1990;Husken, 1989). In Krajan around 75 per cent of the villagers at leasthavesome access to land, either by ownership, shared tenancy arrangements or by other forms of labour arrangements.The onlycashcrop, tobacco, is a main source of insecurity in itself. Prices are unstableandthe productionneeds quite some inputs. In 1997 many farmers took loans from richer villagers, the village head, and a cheap credit programs for the tobacco production. Usually this borrowing takes place at rates of 50 per cent for 6 months, and manywent bankrupt.13 due to low tobacco pricesand the lowquality of it affected by the prolonged rains. Eventhrough, the price of tobacco hasbeenrisingduringthe crisis, the real price of tobacco declined.14 Profits declined while productioncostsrose.Thisprocess in fact took already place several years before the crisis, but then accelerated dramatically leading many farmers to bankruptcy. A significant number (50) of these bankrupt farmers fled to Kalimantaninthehope to finding work and money to cover their financial problems. Others were forced to sell, pawn, or rent out cows or land to cover their debts. Most of the migrants to Kalimantanalso those who were not debt-drivendid not succeed and came back poorer PandeMade Kutanegaraand Gerben Nooteboom than whenthey left.Becauseof the crisis and risingpricesof transport some could never succeeded to come back at all.

b. Effects cf the Crisis on the Villagers and their Responses
According to the villagers, life hadnever beeneasy before. From time to time, they face insecurities in access to income and food due to lifecycle crises, bad harvests, andfluctuatingincomes.Added to tliis, a number of wider regional, economic andnationalcriseshave hadanimpact inthe village. From the beginning of the 20th century onwards, the people of Krajan have experienced six major economic crises. 1)The crisis of the thirties with deflation and stagnating rural prices,15 2) the Japanese occupation,3) the Dutch Agressie, and the following revolutionary years, 4) the eruption of mount Agung inBali in 1963 in which ash rains destroyed most food crops, 5) the turmoil and inflation around the end of the Sukarno era, and eventually 6) the economic crisis of 1997.
Whereas before the 1997crisis the village economy of Krajanwas for an important part subsistence oriented, the monetary crisis affected only parts of the village economy. Those poor depending on monetary is adjective never verbal income sources were among the hardest hit, like wage labourers,petty traders and parttime carpenters. The domain of subsistence production however, stayed mainly untouched and evenproliferated.16 It'simportant for the subsistence of villagers to maintainthe domestic production of maize, paddy and cassava, which is consumed by the household. This includes sub¬ sistence production relations17 as share cropping arrangements (with most important babunan 18 taking a 1/5 share of the harvest in return for the labouring), 15 See for instance Van der Kolff 1936[?], who describes the impact of the recession in the thirties at the village level ina nearby region. The effects of the 1997crisis show some similarities with the crisis of tire thirties. 16 With this we don't want to argue there is something as a dual economy on village level (Boeke, J. H. 1953) On the contrary, the cash oriented and the non-cash part of the society are highly interrelated. Most villagers make a living by combining these two and only by this combination are able to survive. exchange labour, rotatinglabour, and labour for helping out. Only three per cent of the farmers own enoughland to sell food crops on the market.
On the locallevel,the national crisis was a monetary crisis. The rising pricesinflationwere the talk of the day at the beginning of the crisis. In Krajan the crisis beganto befelt during the month of Ramadhan (January 1998)19 when villagers started preparing for IdulFitri, the yearly Muslim's Celebrationthe end of the fasting. Every villager experienced the higher than usual20 prices of rice, cooking oil, flour, and clothes. After these months, the prices continued to increase dra¬ matically. As often during a sudden rise of prices, villagers respondedbycuttingbackontheir consumption.Families,who used to drink coffee, started to drink tea.The ones who drank tea drunk sugar water,and those who could evennotaffordtobuysugar drank only plain water. Eggs and noodles, which were common foodbeforediecrisis,hadbeencut hornnearlyallmenusexcept from dinners at weddings andfunerals.
And kue, cookies and snacks, essential for selamatan and for maintainingsocialrelations,were lesssweet,andlessabundant than in the past. New clothes were hardly bought. At the second research period (May -August 1999), for some families the lack of money for new clothes started to become realproblematic.
One old man said: "Sekarang makanan sama dengan jaman Belanda. Kita makan nasi jagung dengan ikan kering lagi. 53 Tahun merdeka, tapi tidak ada hasil sama sekali". (At the moment we eat similar to what we didduringthe Dutch period again. Just rice mixed with maize and dried fish. 53 years of freedom didn't bring us any advantage at all).
These effects andresponseson the crisis mightseemsubtle,butit means alotinKrajanif youcannot offer coffee to your guests anymore or exchange therequired snacks and cookies.21 The crisis meant not only a drop in consumptionbutwas perceivedas a drop in status as well. Further¬ more, only heavy smokers can understandwhat itmeans to have to shift from Gudang Garam, the good quality filter cigarettes, to cheap alternatives.22 The effects of andresponses to the crisis by agricultural producers in Krajan are diverse. Some farmers reactedto avoiding risk,others went bankrupt and all of them were facing rising costs and lower yields. Nevertheless, some farmers were still able to makegoodprofitsand some even benefited by the crisis. It is important to distinguishbetween effects of the crisis and more generalclimatic effectslikeElNino (drought) whichhadeffects onthe food production arid later on La Nina (extensiverains) which were disaslrousfor tobacco production. Effectsof these climatic changes in agriculture had been explicitly mentioned.
The differentialresponses and effects on the 1997crisis werebeen partly due the specific composition were of the farming activities and due to the unique characteristics of farm labour processes itself: "containing a complex whole of interlinking tasks, eachwith its own degree of flexibility and particular procedure [...] Decisions that are crucial for the end result can be made only during the labor process itself. Therein lies the craftsmanship of farm labor: the interaction between direct producer and labor object; i.e. the continual observation, inter¬ pretation and evaluation of one's own labor in order to be able to re-adapt it" (Ploeg, 1990).
In the tobacco season, following the beginning of the crisis the area planted with tobacco in Krajan declined fifty per cent and most farmers shifted from this risky crop to the safer subsistence crop of maize. Most farmers worried said andthat they would not make much profit because of the rising costs and preferred to plant corn, rice or cassava "karena perutharuskenyang dulu" (because we have to fill our stomachs first). Due to the rising prices of food and labour, many of richer farmers (who are in control of 60 per cent of the land area) were reluctant to use any paid labour, or even huge numbers of unpaid labourers. These labourers still needed considerable amounts of food, coffee, and cigarettes to work. Some farmers, who were used to grow tobacco on a large scale, speculated on liigher prices and borrowed money to produce tobacco in tire same way as they were used to do (by using wage labour andmanyexternalinputs).
But,most of these went bankrupt and only some were able to make some profits, by shifting quickly to formof non-paidlabour during the growingseason.Onlyfarmers, who were able to mobiliseunpaid labour,23 hadother sources of cash income, or were successful in tobacco trading, succeeded in makingprofit with tobacco inthe summer of 1998. For smaller numbers of farmers (30 -40 per cent of total population), who could not mobilise much labour force,only the amount of seedlings ahouseholdwithcloseneighbours or friends could master was planted (with a maximum of 1/ 3 -Vi hectare ladang). They were able to make some profit because of their access to labour and the use of non-commodity labour arrangements for the production of commodities (see Ploeg, 1990).
However, this profit wasin relative termslower than in previous years and seldom enough to make all ends meet. Added to this,the pricesof inputs like fertiliser, seedlings and pesticides24 rose.The impact of the risingprices of agriculturalinputs inKrajanwas much smaller than in Sriharjo because of the minor role of inputs inits agriculture.
In 1999, when for the second time after the start of the crisis tobacco was planted, little had changed.Fewvillagers decidedto plant cash crops because they were afraidtoborrow money and if they planted,themthey did this witha minimumof inputsleading to a bad harvest. The heavy and early rains at the beginningof the season, and the total lack of rain at the end added to the problems. Only a few richer farmers who plantedcashcrops gothighprofits because prices of tobacco had increasedsteeply.
Generally, during the crisis, making a cash profit in Krajan agriculturewas onlypossiblewith the use of non-cash labour and non-commodity resources. The economic crisis inKrajan,thus led to a general withdrawal from the market, risk avoiding in agriculture activities and trading, and to the cash-shortages in the village.

c. Effects of the Crisis on Rural Labour
As the majority of the Krajan population does not own any 23 These are usually patrons who before the crisis already had a considerable number of clients tied to them. Or villagers who were part of rotatinglabour groups or exchange labour arrangements. 24 Pesticides are hardly used inKrajan. land,25 these peopleare depended on wage labour as their main source of income. As it described previously, in Krajan both wage labour andnon-commodityforms of labour are important to get access to land. After the crisis broke out, the need for wage labourers had decreased more than60 percent andfor free (nontied) wage labourers, the possibilities of findingpaidwork nearlydiminished to zero. Onthe other hand,forms of co-operative work, as local forms of gotong royong, exchange labour,rotating work groups and helping-out labours increased in importance. The villageeconomy shiftedfrom semi-subsistence to a highly subsistenceeconomyagainexcept for those having access to the outside economy.
It is important to realise that rural people make combinations of different types of work (occupational pluralism) and in that way often are able to survive crises. Only few Krajan families were solely depended on wage labour. Villagers combined wage labour (whenever possible) exchange labour arrangements and handicraft production at home. As with the embroidery makers inSriharjo, many women inKrajanplayed a crucial role for the households survival by earningmoneyat home.InKrajan, women make sell besek, small bamboo baskets, and bring them regionally to Bondowoso and Jember as containers for the production of tape (sweet fermented snack of cassava). In some hamlets before the crisis, 30 -40 percent of allwomenwere periodicallyengagedinthese besek productions. Women usually make them incidentally to cover short periods of cash or food shortages,inslack periodsduring the agricultural cycle or when the prices of besek are high.When the crisis broke out, nearly all poorer villagers made besek the whole year round. It increased popularitybecauseitwas the only work available, it is easy and cheap to make, the bamboo is locallyavailable,ityields cashand it offers the opportunity cf small loans or cash advancements by traders. Butmoreimportanteven, 25 I define landless as those with little or no land. As nearly all villagers have userightsof someland(thelandwhere thehouseisstandingonandagarden or adjacent plot) Iuse as definitions of landless those categories whose domestic productiondoesnotexceedmorethan two monthsof food (paddy, maize or cassava) or who do not share a household with those who have access. Landlessness in Krajan means on an average, those families owning an acreage of sawah less than 0.1 ha.and ladangless than 0.2 ha. the work canbe done at homeby the whole family, incombination with other household activities such as cooking, fire wood collection, drying rice or maize, child care and the like. Increased household production of besek enabled villagers to buy rice and maize and prevented many villagers from starvation. The availability of non-agricultural sources of incomewas muchmore important then the aid programs of the government incopingwith the crisis. However, as demands for tape declined and supply increased, prices stayed constant and in context of huge inflation relatively declined. Before the crisis in 1997, a day work of one person making besek was enough to buy 1.5-1 kg of rice of reasonable quality, a year later, only the equivalent of 0.5 to less than 1kg of low quality rice or maize could be earned. As before the crisis, the supply of besek was depending on the price, now the supply became inflexible and villagers continued to produce it even under diminishing returns because they hadno choice.
As asideeffect of the crisis and the availability of handicrafts,we found indications that labour divisions between man and women had changed. Women in poorer households are tra¬ ditionallystronginthesubsistence part of the household, then became responsible for a steady cash flow by selling besek as well. They were in fact much more successful than men in guaranteeing subsistence and in coping with the crisis, therefore gained a stronger and more independent position within the householdandinsome casesinsociety.
ContrarytoSriharjo,migration inKrajanisnotmassive.Beforethe crisis, five to ten per cent of the householdshada family member engaged in some kind of migration.Contrary to the general picture of Java where rural villagers migrate to cities,26 migration out of Krajanis mostly rural-rural.Someof these villagers were searching for work in the regionof Bondowoso,Besukiand Madura. Others went to Bali to work as street peddlers and some young women, recruited by outsiders,went to Malaysia.Only some of these migrantshavebeen successful and many of them returned without any profit. The majority of the Krajan migrants however, followed campaigns of Dcpnaker (department of labour) which lured workers for the oil palmplantations inKalimantan.
When the crisis broke out, not many of these migrants returned to Krajan.Onlysome womenwho worked in Malaysia returned, some had been successful, others not.27 Those who used to go to Bali decided to stay at home after receiving news that business in Bali was slack. Many villagers in Kalimantan didn't wish to come back, or were trapped because they could not pay the boat trip anymore. Only in1999,when GN returned for the second time in Krajan, many former wage labourers had found work in the forests of Banyuwangiandearned reasonable incomes that they brought home to buy rice. These groups of poor were among the first to recover and turned out to fall down below the poverty line only temporary.

d. Effects of the Crisis on
Poverty Like in Sriharjo, those who have no access to landexperience difficulties inliving,but not all of them are automatically poor.Only those who also have no access to other sources of income are. Categories as widows, widowers, widows/widowers without children or with very small children, old people without children and the handicapped usually make up the poor, if they are not cared for by more affluent relatives or village members. Therefore, social exclusion and isolation are important in understandingthe realhardsides of poverty. Relations with other people are crucial and make the differencebetweenthe needy and cared for. The poorer you are, the more difficult to maintain social relations like the example of bu Sahami shows: Bu Sahami lives in a small bamboo shed with a roof of alangalanggrass. Shehasone bedonwhich she sits allday longmakingbesek.Withthat, she earns just enough tobuy maize and rice and some¬ times some salt. She never goes to selamatan, because shecannot affordto givetwo kilo's of rice. She therefore, hashardlynocontacts,never gets visitors, and the headof the hamlet does not even know her.
She neverbuysoncredit,be¬ cause "then the money would not be enough for food" as buying on credit is more expensive. "At first, when the cheap rice came (sembako) I didnotknow it. I only startedtotake partsince the last few months". She also cares for her grand¬ daughter of five years old. Besides that girl, she has no relatives in the village and neighboursdonotcareabout her. Her children left a few years ago for Kalimantan andbuSahaminevergot any news of them. Her main worry is her slant house of which she is afraid will col¬ lapse one night and fall downonher andher grand¬ daughter.
Very poor villagers could not do much than cut their coat accordingto their cloth.They only once or twice a day, mixed their rice with bigger shares of maize. Much depended on where they got their income from. The far most poor,peoplelikebuSahami really experienced the pain of inflation while she really owns nothingand therefore totally cash depended. Those categories are not the mostsubsistence insociety, as they are often excluded and isolated from any access to local resources. Others, widows, who for instance are allowed to clean the fields from leftovers after harvesting (a clear example of a socialsecurity arrangement) could lessenthe painto some extent and did not experience major differences as they could not fall any further livingfor years at the edge of starvation.
But, were there local arrange¬ mentsandinitiativewho caredfor the local poor? Hefner writes about moral considerations in caring for weaker members of society: "The social orientation emphasizes neither selfless collectivism nor self-possessed individualism.Ideallyhouseholds guarantee itsownsubsistenceand welfare". And about the moral village economy: "Its norms are mostapparent notinthe realmsof production, but in consumption andexchange [...]It'seffect islife¬ style conformity not selfless sharing" (Hefner 1990).I sharethe opinion of Hefner. A major conclusion is that not much of a village-wide social safety net existed. The rule is that villagers take care of their own social security.
In contrast to poor villagers, richer villagers had not much difficulty indoingthis, as manyof them even benefited from the crisis or were able to consolidate their way of living. Among those who were doing well during the crisis were biglandownersable to sell rice or corn (less than 5 per cent of the total population) and traders ofcattle,chicken,birdsand tobacco. These richer villagers however werehitmorebyclimatic irregularitiesandsubsequent crop failure than by the crisis itself. A major effect of the crisis might have been that inequalities betweenthe richandthe poor will increase again. This timein contrast to the greenRevolutionnot by the increase of income by richer members of society,but by the fallbackof incomebythe poor resources.
e. The Role of the Local Government Duringthe

Crisis
Thebeginningof the crisis can becharacterised by a general lack of policies,bothonanationaland regional level. The regional government that deals with village affairs isthe kecamatanlevel (district) and the kabupaten (regency) level. Officials at those levelshavealways onlybeenused to carry out programs of the nationalgovernment,butwere not very adapted to react on the differential needs of the local people. At the beginning of the crisis, both national and regional governments continued their normalresponsesupuntillvillage levels. Itseemed that the national government had no solutions at hand and the regional ones continued to carry out the ordinary programsandwere busy with visits to villages presenting their usual stories about development, mutual help and Pancasila, the five pillars of the New Order society. An example of the visit of the Bupati (head of regency Bondowoso) to Krajan: Once,duringthe ramadhan of January 1998 the Bupati came to Krajan. He opened the dinner inthehouseof the village kiai (religious leader) and prayed with the village peopleindie mosque. Inhis speech,hefocused onthe re¬ sponsibility of villagers to make a better living,to obey God and the government and to keep silent and har¬ monious. According to him, the best thing to do in this time of economicimpair was to be active in gotong royong,followingthe govern¬ ment developmental projects, the tillage of el¬ ephantsgrass andkopt rakyat (peoplescoffee), usingmod¬ ern inputs as fertiliser, new varieties of rice, maize and tobacco. He larded his speech with humour and populist references to reli¬ gion and norms to strengthen his argument. Unfortunately, most villag¬ ers did not understand him, as he spoke highclass Indo¬ nesianand not Madurese. Whenthecrisishadcontinued, governmental officials started to visit the villages more often. At first, some funds for small local projects as alphabetising programs,PKK,andreforestation increased.Thanthe funds for these projects dried up and were not renewed. The other normal development programs onvillage levels kept running. As Krajan is an IDT-village (inpres desa tertinggal (literary a backward village)) the village is entitled to special developmental projects.
Thishasimplicationsfor die funds available for the village cooperative (KUD), the IDT projects as roadbuilding,poverty alleviation, etc. and for cheap credit (KUT) programs. These The Effectsof the Crisis inRural Java programsjust kept on runningas they were before except that the IDTprograms were terminated.
Only at around April 1998 the first special programs started to help the poor who were no aid longer able to buyfoodstuffs.The government, army and private donors (Muslims, Christians and Chinese) started to supply basic needs as rice,cookingoil and salt to the rural poor. Theseoften spontaneousaid campaigns, locally simply called sembako, can be characterised by a lot of showing off, little organisation, and a lack of reliable old (precrisis) data.The decisionof whom was entitled to help was decided by the village leader and his officials, but not based on dear criteria.OftenI witnessed that the most needy did not get while others close to village offirials were able to secure one or more than one package. More remote hamlets of Krajan often got less helpthanthosenearby.Thiswhole campaignof spontaneoussembako aid was more symbolical than really effective. Krajan received five times around 150 packages, while the needy made up much more. More significant sembako help was given later (starting in October 1998), when the govern¬ mentsent cheap riceonamonthly basis (Rpl,000.00 per kg). In the case of Krajan, this meant that 12 tons served a population of 3,400 villagers. This not only decreased the ricepricesinthe villagebutled a dozen small waning to the edge of bankruptcy as these smallshop owners were dependent on the selling of rice. The amount of rice was so huge (3.5 kg per head of the population per month),that it was sometimes hard to find enough buyers for tire rice. The villageheadandlater hissecretary were selling some of the rice illegally back to town for market prices. Nevertheless what went wrong, for those poor who were shocked by the sudden fall of purchasepower were very helped by it. Many poor villagers were prevented for starvation in this way. Unfortunately, the utmost poor had no access to this program. Even Rp10,000.00 was too muchfor them as poor people have no access to income and credit. Only after some time they were offered loans from the main shop owner of the villagethe mother of the village headwho asked 60 per cent of the received rice in return what she sold with profit in her shop. The village middle class were mainly profiting from this program including that quite some of this rice disappeared in the dis¬ tributingprocess.Inneighbouring villages, the amount of rice was always five till ten per cent lower than promised. Government officers at the district level sold this riceper cent "tocover the costs of theextra work" as theyjustified it. As with most other village aid projects, lower government employees benefitedfrom this aid programs. The cheap credit programs (KUT) were extended greatly for the planting season of 1998/99. Little farmers became available for local farmers and most of the funds (more than 150 millionKupiah'swere usedby the village headfor hisownprojects). This crisis made clear that the Indonesian government has been more often a source of insecurity than a provider of social safety duringthe crisis. Other aspects of the JPS (social safely net programs) hardly reached Krajan and Iwas not in the position to study what happened with the funds available for these programs at the district and regency level, but was able to notice that no significant programs to increase work,educationor access to health were carriedout ona village level.
In general, poorer villagers benefitedmost from the subsidies on the nine strategic basic needs which kept prices as low as possible, from the cheap rice program and from their specific village economy who offered many opportunities to return to a subsistence. Moreimportant than all, the programs of the govern¬ ment was the home industry of makingbesekwho offeredtherural poor a way to survive and to generate income next to their subsistence sources.

Comparison and Conclusions
A close comparison of these twovillages shows that theimpact of the crisis has been substantial in both villages. Both Harmoko and Jellinek were too quick in saying that the impact inthe rural areas was not severe. Jellinek's quick study was basedonresearch in few villages with small-scale enterprises and therefore a stronger productionbasethanthe villages of Sriharjo and Krajan. Her conclusion might be applicable for villages withstrong resource bases.28 If looking at villages like Sriharjo and Krajan, it can be concluded that the crisis has hit the ruralareas as strongas itdidthe cities andmorepainfully, especially the poor in these villages were among the hardest hit. The comparison of Sriharjo and Krajan in this article shows that it is not very useful to judge the effects of the crisis in broad dichotomies as rural -urban, or poor-rich, but a more differen¬ tiated approach is needed. Therefore, in our article we offer an insight view of two types of Javanese rural societies and describe different categories of villagers. Especially in dealing withthe ruralpoor,itisimportant to look at the resource base and differentialways of their access to resources to explain their vulnerability. Par.deMadeKvianegaraendGerbcnNooteboom pawn or rent out productive assets or lost access to paid labour (oftenincities). 4. The temporary poor.Those vil¬ lagers who fell to poverty by losingtheirjobs, or byasevere fall inincome due to inflation. These villagers were able to cope withtheir problemsandsoonfind new work again.InSrihaijo,most of them who lost work in cities were able to find a newjob again, while many wage labourers in Krajan started to migrate and added their income by working seasonallyoutsidethevillage.The first three categories of villagers form the structural poor and for them anationalrecoveryfrom the crisis will not make difference. Especially for them, something more any drastic should change. Hie most important effect of the crisis hasbeenthat the number of structural the poor in rural areas has been increased and the gap between rich and poor widened further.
Comparing Sriharjo and Krajanat a more general levelwe can see that the village of Krajan ismuchmoreremoteandisolated than the village of Sriharjo and morevillagers haveaccess to land. A reasonfor this difference canbe found inthe populationpressure between these villages. Sriharjo has three times more inhabitants thanKrajan,whichmeansthat per villager, less land is available. Nevertheless, the population pressure cannot fully explain the big difference in access to land. Reasons for these differences are also the rateof commercialisation, the organisationof village society, the impacts cf the Green Revolution, which had little influenceinKrajan,infrastructure and the different agro-ecological conditions as soilfertility,andthe agriculturalsystem.Regardingthe weak production bases of these villages, we can observe that povertyisslightly different within these villages as well. Sriharjo is muchmoredependent onincomes out of urbanareas while Krajan is more subsistence and agriculture oriented. In Sriharjo, most villagers havebeenexcludedfrom agriculture and were forced to find work in cities already two decades ago,while inKrajanmost villagers still have some access to land (although land of low production quality). Labour arrangements in return are more important in Krajan and have become more important during the crisis.Examplesof these labour relationsare babunan (workingfor a 1/5 share of the harvest), exchange labour, clientele labour and corvee. Due to these forms of access many villagers were less hardhitby the crisis than those Forgotten Villages? The Effectscfthe Crisis inRural Java wage labourers totally dependent on cash incomes, both inSriharjo and Krajan. Hefner (1990) studied labour utilisation in mountainous Tengger and observed that: "Highlanders refer regularly to the importance of co-operation (gotong royong) and reciprocal labour in their lives. They cite its prevalence as a key point of contrast with lowland society. Whatever its moral value as a symbol of upland communalism, however, in practise its role in agriculture is minor. Most agricultural work is done by household labour". In studying theuplandeconomyof Krajan,we come to the same conclusion. In Sompok,thehillypartof Sriharjo, communal labour is important, but to a lesser extent as relations with the outside world are much more intense. During the crisis, householdlabour turned out tobe crucial inbothvillages. Although villagers engaged in noncommoditised labour relations were not that bad, they mainly survived by the labour of the whole family and for those in Krajan, especially that share tenancy is important. Sometimes relationsbetweenthelandowners andthea landlessbecamesoclose that they take theshape of patronclient relations. Hefner remarks about patron-clientrelations:"The patron provides a significant measure of social insurance by advancing interest-free loans during difficult times. Inthe long run,these loansmaynotberepaid even if the employee severs ties with the employer (Hefner, 1990)". The social security function of patrons for providing cashturnedout tobeinsignificant during the 97/98 crisis. Patrons turn out to be such unimportant socialsecurity agents as described in the work of Hefner, but they help secure the livelihood of their clients by offering labour opportunities (either incities or in ruralareas), shares of the harvest and small daily help in the form of free meals and small rice or maize loans which indeed often were not expectedtobepaidback (see Nooteboom, 1999). Hefner describes the aspirations of the lowest coolies in the Tengger: "Most of themseetheir chancesfor self-improvement,notincollective solidarity with anonymous class cohorts, but in personalized allianceswithindividualpatrons" (Hefner, 1990). People engage in patron-clientrelationsifitcanhelp them reach their goals, and the crisis made clear that those being part of these kindsof dependency relations were not among the worse off.
Infact, the stereotypical view that rural societies are homo-PandeMadeKuianegaraand Gcrben Nooteboom genous andharmoniousandmore adapted to cope with crisis situations has highly blinded government employees and intellectuals for the hardships of the rural poor and the existing inequalities, like inequalities between regions, economic sectors, classes and within villages. At the beginning of the crisis, the government was very hesitant to take action. They still seemed to believe that the rural areas were not affected and could cope with the difficulties. Governmental responses on the crisis were not effective, too late and had nothing to do with the causes of the crisis. The local government was only adapted to carry out programsandwaited for instructions from above. When these instructions did not come, they were not able to take initiatives themselves. Therefore, it was hard to meet government people who seemed to be deeply concerned by the poverty of the local population and not seldom officials benefited substantially from channelling help to local people.
The students call for merdeka (freedom)at thebeginningof 1998 in Jakarta, leading to the fall of Soeharto, appealed strongly to many villagers. Since Soeharto's step down,people were daringto open up and willing to take initiatives resulting in numerous demonstrations andreplacements of village heads and government officials. One of the similarities that could be observed in this movement inbothresearch areas, was the quest for equality,justice and poverty alleviation. In Sriharjo, this led to numerous demonstrations and increased tension. In Krajan, where village society is more hierarchical, villagers were afraidfor thevillage leader and limited themselves to gossip. In neighbouring villages however, a number of village leaderswere forced to step down. Villagers in general were happy. They now could freely speak out about the government,corruption, poverty and inequality and about the widespread lack of govern¬ mental responsibility. In that sense, the merdeka movementsthe freedom of speechwas a success and has been carried the local level. Merdeka in fact was a bigger success than reformasi, the reformation of up to government and society that only partly has taken place yet. Our data make clear however, that for a reformation of the Indonesian government, not only a reformationof the higher levels of the government is needed, but attention for restructuring the localgovernment iscrucialas well.