         Over the last three years, the government has taken the initiative in drafting the Village Bill. Until now, however, the Bill has not been completely discussed and enacted. The main reason is because there has not been a mutual understanding of the position of the village and the interface between the villages and rural areas among the decision makers in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
           On the one hand, the Directorate General of Regional Autonomy wants the villages to be part of the arrangement of the local government. On the other hand, the Directorate General of Community and Village Empowerment wants the Village Bill to be its own bill so that villages can become stronger and economically and politically powerful. Attempts to reconcile these two great institutions are experiencing difficulties.
           Eko Sutoro thus said as a speaker at the monthly UGM Center for Rural Studies’ discussion entitled "Comparison of the Village Bill and the Rural Development Bill" recently. He said that the agreement between the Director of Regional Affairs, Dr. Made Suwandi, and the Director of the Directorate General of Village Government, Drs. Persadaan Girsang, M.Sc., was made in mid-August 2009 with the result that the village still stands as the lowest government organization and closest to the community, while the authority includes the original authority and real authority.
           "Discussion of the village bill, however, had been stalled because at the same time the House took the initiative to legalize the Rural Development Bill, which will be ratified at the end of the tenure of the Parliament of 2004-2009 period. Meanwhile, the The Regional Representative Council rejected the Rural Development Bill because substantially the manuscript of the Bill is not worthy of being the law and contains a controversial allocation of 20% of the state budget funds and 20% of the budget went into the village accounts. Therefore, the government would have to give a response to the Parliament’s initiative by commissioning the Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Public Works, Minister of Justice and Human Rights, and the Minister of Finance, to conduct these discussions of the bill with the House," explained Sutoro.
           In Sutoro’s view, the village should be viewed as more than just a rural area. Villages should be seen as an entity in living and the life in contact with the rural areas, namely as the area or areas adjacent to the village. "Because rural areas generally have the concept of spatial dimensions and the economy, while the village has three domains, governance, development, and community or empowerment," he said.