A brief background

Indonesia is being heavily corrupted by its own people, and notably by its own leaders. Despite its abundant resources, Indonesia is one of the poorest countries in the East Asia region. The nation is big, very diverse and fragile. Only through a solid cooperation of its people—from various religious, races and ethnic backgrounds—will the country stand firm united in the future; only through a better understanding of its people about the nation's current and future challenges will the nation prosper; and only through the constructive views of the nation’s people and leaders of the global affairs will the country benefits from its relations with other countries. The Indonesian Institute works in those areas.

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Missions

The Indonesian Institute, founded in 2002, is a non-partisan policy research and social development organization dedicated to innovative research, analysis and social development initiatives that promotes Indonesia’s unity, prosperity and democracy. We challenge conventional thinking and help manage strategic transitions to the better future of Indonesia through interdisciplinary and collaborative studies in economics, social and human development, democracy, culture and international relations. We also maintain a constantly updated library of information and reprints on various topics, collected from various sources, related to above topics. Through publications, conferences, policy recommendations, and social development initiatives we seek to guide Indonesia leaders and society in promoting a better Indonesia.

Our Messages

"UNITY, DEMOCRACY AND PROSPERITY"

Are you?

a Javanese? Indonesian Chinese? Sundanese? Papuan, Bataknese or...one of the other 230 tribes?

a Moslem, Christian Protestant, Christian Catholic, Buddhist, Hindus or any other beliefs?

a well educated, well trained, well informed, wealthy or an unfortunate person?

a male or female?

living abroad or in Indonesia?

Life is beautiful and better when people can live harmoniously and peacefully with their neighbors, and when people and their neighbors can jointly be prosperous.

Differences must not destroy the splendor of unity, harmony and prosperity. People may have different races, but have the same aspirations; may have different religions but have the same national goals; may have different ethnic backgrounds, but we—the people—are Indonesians, at least we were born or brought up in the country. We have the same goals for Indonesia: unity, democracy and prosperity.

Indonesia could have been a place to see that, but........ 

Why is Indonesia considered as one of the most corrupt nations in the world?

Why does Indonesia become one of the most indebted nations in the world?

Why does Indonesia become one of the last sought places to dwell?  

Why does Indonesia become one of the poorest countries in the world (in terms of the percentage of poor people)?

Why do most of the older generations act only for their own benefits and dominate public discourses and public-policy decision making, leaving the young generations only as spectators? 

Why the Indonesian media are so poor that most of their coverages are government officials’ statements, bias and partisan observers’ comments and provocative religion leaders’ statements?

Why did the Indonesian mass media fail in providing political and social education to Indonesian people that we in fact desperately need?

Why do the successful young people tend to act only for their own benefits and forget that millions of their unfortunate country fellows are still living in misery? 

Why are the young people willing to destroy other people and their possessions only because of differences in races, ethnic groups and religion?

Why do the young people hate other countries and other nations where in fact they know nothing about them?

Why are our economic performances so bad while countries which were behind us two decades ago now far better than us?

Why is the development in Indonesia so unbalanced across provinces?

There are other thousands of whys we can raise. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.  But leaving them unanswered is even dangerous. 

Indonesians must have their dreams of a better future. Dream is the foundation of great triumphs. There is nothing more famous than the American dreams: prosperity and liberty. And they work for it. Their founding fathers worked for it and their successive generations keep, maintain and enhance it. 

Indonesians must also work to realize the dreams. It's time to raise your voice, grab someone's hand, reach out to others, spread democratic messages and offer cooperative action to others. Only through a solid cooperation among the country’s generations will Indonesia be able to advance to higher level of development. Remember Sumpah Pemuda 1928 (The Youth Pledge of 1928) when the country young generations pledged their unity in 1928? Remember the young Hatta and friends in 1920s? Why we don't have such people anymore? Perhaps Indonesians must have been care too much about their own selves and rarely offer a cooperative gesture to their fellow Indonesians.