[This appeared in The Melbourne Age, 16 September 1998]

A farmer who went to harvest his rice in Central Java last week found the field had been stripped bare during the night. The thieves left this considerate note: 'Sorry, don't be angry, we're hungry'.

Food theft, albeit carried out politely, is growing more common in Indonesia today. There is no famine, but people cannot afford enough rice and are turning to cheaper, less tasty alternatives like cassava flour.

Newspapers meanwhile are full of stories of unscrupulous operators reselling the supposedly plentiful subsidised rice for huge profits. See here the double dilemma of Indonesia's crisis: not simply to feed the hungry, but to reform the system that delivers the food.

Only yesterday, it seems, we were agog over our giant neighbour's spectacular growth. Indonesia was an ascendant regional superpower. Its newly rich middle class spawned shopping malls that out-glittered anything in Australia. Except in some outer regions, the concepts 'endemic poverty', 'Third World' and 'aid' seemed to belong to a forgotten past. It was a miracle. Today Indonesia is once more a basket case, and those concepts are back with a vengeance.

The International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Jakarta office two weeks ago released a grim report compiled by some of the most knowledgable economists to have worked on Indonesia. Its most disturbing prediction is that no less than 100 million Indonesians, nearly half the population, will fall below the (very modestly defined) poverty line by the end of this year. By the end of 1999 a combination of stagnant wages and hyper- inflation could push two thirds of the population below the line.

These are 1960s poverty levels. They mean that all the sacrifices of the New Order have been undone. They mean that poverty relief is no longer a matter of mopping up pockets but should be directed at the majority of the population. 'No country in recent history, let alone the size of Indonesia', said the World Bank recently, 'has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune'.

Economic development used to draw millions out of the countryside to the cities. That flow is now reversed, as agriculture has not been as badly affected. Cities, says the ILO report, are the worst hit by unemployment.

Most Indonesian companies are stone broke, especially in the manufacturing, construction and service sectors. Few foreigners are interested in reinvesting until the banking mess is sorted out.

Half the 5.4 million waged workers displaced by the economic crisis in 1998 will try to make it in the 'informal' sector, selling cigarettes, scrounging farm jobs. Two thirds of the working population is there already, so everyone will just get less. The other half will presumably hang around the city streets, potential foot soldiers for dissent or for crime.

Indonesia certainly needs a lot of help from friends. However, the aid agenda cannot be a simple handout. It must include significant reform.

What kind of reform? Here each aid agency seems to have its own approach. The IMF demands economic openness to change the way business works. The ILO, and our own AusAID, stress the urgency of welfare. The Australian Council for Overseas aid, a veritable voice in the wilderness, wants the global financial system reformed.

Yet everyone seems to share one conviction: a corrupt and remote bureaucracy was one cause of Indonesia's present crisis, and must be reformed.

The ILO report promotes an alternative to the joys promised only yesterday by the free market, globalised economy. Its vision goes back to the country side, with renewed emphasis on labour- intensive agriculture. It goes back to import substitution manufacturing, away from exporting for the global markets. And it goes back to the basic needs agenda - community development, health and education.

It also envisages what amounts to a democratic revolution. Local government is to play a major role in managing large public works programs. Non-government organisations should provide rural credit to help farmers.

If the ILO economists have their way, this could be the moment when Indonesia's sluggish bureaucracy becomes accountable to the people it's meant to serve. Demanding a revolution just when government has so much work to do may appear like a big ask. But the aid agencies don't see it as an optional extra, nor do Indonesians who represent civil society.

The Indonesian coalition of non-government organisations INFID believes that 'lasting economic reform can only take place in conjunction with fundamental political reform'. The World Bank, too, wants 'the good governance agenda' kept prominent.

All this means that recovery for Indonesia is fast becoming a matter for ordinary Indonesians.

The Australian Council for Overseas Aid, representing private aid agencies in this country, last week called on trade unions, churches, the arts community, lawyers, business - on all sections of Australian society - 'to consider what practical contribution each sector might make to Indonesian society at this time'. They can then start discussing those practical ideas with their Indonesian counterparts. There is a role here for ordinary Australians too.

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine. The Australian Council for Overseas Aid and Inside Indonesia will hold a seminar in Melbourne on 19 October to assess what Australians can do to help.