An op-ed in The Jakarta Post, May 26, 2023
“Plan B for new capital for Indonesia: Horizontal decentralization,”
An op-ed piece in The Jakarta Post on the Indonesian government’s plan to move the nation’s capital from Java to a site in Borneo. This is not something to lightly embark on. I argue that, given the scale of the project, it would be prudent to think of a Plan B, for instance, to disperse the Ministries to different cities, relying upon hard-won COVID-19 work habits to allow everyone to work together in a distributed fashion. Of course, B Plans don’t meet every objective, but given the costs and the risks of the undertaking, it might be a worthwhile interim plan.
The op-ed is available at “Plan B for new capital for Indonesia: Horizontal decentralization, A pdf is here: