Speaking of public goods provision by the government, either the central government, regional government, state-owned company or regional companies, it can be said that the access to utilization of electricity network from PLN (State Electricity Company), clean water from PDAM (Water Regional Company), waste transportation and public toilet distribution in rural areas in Indonesia are relatively uneven. Conceptually, the utilization of public goods can be optimal if those accesses can be evenly distributed.
Those statements were said by Ni Made Sukartini, a lecturer at Faculty of Economics and Business Airlangga University during an open examination for Doctoral Programme at BRI Auditorium, Faculty of Economics and Business UGM on Monday (31/7). Made Sukartini defended her dissertation entitled Two Essays on Public Goods Provision in Indonesia with the promoter team consisting of Prof. Dr. Samsubar Saleh, M.Soc.Sc., Artidiatun Adji, M.Ec., M.A., Ph.D. and Erlambang Nahartyo, M.Sc., Ph.D., CMA.
Ni Made Sukartini said the distribution of public goods in the empirical level is found to be relatively unequally distributed. The urban areas and the capital cities are relatively better distributed than those that are located further from the downtown.
On the other hand, the economic resources diversity reflects the purchasing power and effective demand of the community. Meanwhile, the diversity in the social identities such as diversity in ethnicity and religion can influence the preferences of individuals and communities in determining the consumption priority of the public goods.
“The differences in the preferences are able to reduce the government effectiveness in distributing the access of public goods,” said Ni Made Sukartini.
According to Ni Made Sukartini, the economic diversity becomes a dominant factor in providing different access to electricity network from PLN, water from PDAM, waste transportations and public toilet distribution. In villages, most of the local people work in the agriculture sector, and those villages do not have mineral C mining source. Therefore, the distribution of public goods access is low and this condition will remain with or without controlling the village characteristics, village location, and transportation access to the village.
“This finding gives an indication that the agricultural villages in Indonesia are identical with lower public goods than the non-agricultural ones. This finding also supports the study that had been done by Beramendi and Jensen in 2015,” she added.
Therefore, the villages that are located in forest, mountain ridges, mountains, and watersheds areas or areas that still use water transportation, soil or sand roads, and the ones that cannot be traversed throughout the year, will certainly experience a slowdown in the development process if they are not supported by the distribution of public goods access or basic infrastructures such as PLN, clean water, and public toilet. Therefore, if the geographical factor becomes a constraint in distributing those accesses, the regional government is expected to provide alternative resources that are available in those villages.