Demystifying the Relationship between Decentralization and Villagers� Welfare

Abstract

Theoretically, political decentralization aims at creating prosperity for society, however it was not the case in Indonesia because the creation of autonomous regions with its authorities are unable to strengthen grassroots people, to understand and coping their problems through bottom-up planning. It is no wonder, decentralization failed to contribute in creating prosperity. This research analyses the Villages' Middle Term Planning (RPJMDes) with qualitative methods. The result shows that strengthening villagers failed substantively to acknowledge villagers' involvement in planning RPJMDes. Furthermore, the process is glaringly misguided because RPJMDes heavily focusing on physical development without taking into account economic potential. The next failure indication is that RPJMDes was unable to disclosed local economic rent seeking, which is the main problem for farmers in marketing their products. In short, the root of the problem is because of supra village structure focusing on short term economical interests and the existence of villagers' paternalistic culture.