Rice Terraces in Bali with A View on Socio Cultural Impact of Green Revolution.
Socio Cultural Impact of the Green Revolution
Balinese Water Temple System
By Jonathan Sepe
In
the 1970s, the Green Revolution answered the call of world hunger. The
program was undertaken to commoditize production of several cash crops
in order to make countries more self-sufficient and increase the world
food supply. Despite its good intentions, it became one of the most
unsuccessful development projects in history whose effects are still
widespread. In the case of the island of Bali, three main factors
contributed to the development and failure of the project. Developers,
operating from an economist’s perspective, failed to recognize the
culture, history, and natural agriculture of Balinese society. First,
the Balinese cultural devotion to religious ritual is closely tied to
their agricultural system. Second, the history of Dutch colonization
established a framework for bureaucratic farming methods, which was
later utilized by the Green Revolution. Finally, the implementation of
capitalized farming opposed the natural agriculture due to its disregard
for the natural system of water temples. One must first examine the
social organization of Balinese society.
Bali is a province in
the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is one of over thirteen
thousand islands located in the Indonesian archipelago. Historically,
Indonesia was engulfed in the momentum of the booming commodity market.
The islands became early victims of colonization beginning with the
spice trade of the sixteenth century. In their search for nutmeg,
cloves, pepper and other fine goods, the Portuguese first conquered
Indonesia in the 1500s and then the British and Dutch struggled for
power until the Dutch obtained full control by the 1700s (Encyclopedia
Britannica CD-ROM). Indonesia declared its independence from the
Netherlands in 1945. However, the nation still experiences the aftermath
of colonialism as the economy presently relies on the production of
export cash crops such as rice, timber, rubber, tea, coconuts, coffee,
and spices (Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM). Bali primarily remained
untouched by colonialism until the Dutch invasion of the mid-nineteenth
century.
In the sixteenth century, Bali became a haven for many
Hindu refugees when Java succumbed to Islam. In the Balinese sect of
Hinduism, temples play a primary role in social integration. Lansing
notes that rather than prompting the formation of cities or urban
centers, Balinese institutional structures managed everything from the
control of irrigation to the rituals of the Hindu religion and caste
system throughout a network of temples (The Three Worlds 7). The complex
village temple system includes caste system temples, kinship temples,
agriculture temples, and water temples that organize all aspects of
daily life. Lansing writes:
“Every temple represents a social
unit; it is a permanent institution, and only those directly involved in
the life of that institution need to pay attention to it. A second
consequence is that people must belong to more than one
temple...Temples, then, are more than places of worship and more than
symbols of social units. In an important sense, they are the
institutional framework of Balinese society”
Therefore, temples are responsible for the cohesion of Balinese society as religious followers form strong bonds and transform into a congregation.
The
agricultural system, like other aspects of society, relies on the
temple network for guidance. This decentralized system is regulated by
priests rather than central government authority yet the process
requires intricate systems of social control. Lansing indicates that
this framework begins with the direction of the water temple as the
water flows along the river through the weir, or dam, and ends up in the
subak down the irrigation canals (Priests 48). The subak, an irrigation
society, demonstrates this local-level control. Clifford Geertz writes:
“subak
is defined as all the major rice terraces irrigated from a single
dam...The dams are arranged one below the other down the river canyons, a
single canal, usually of some length, carrying the diverted water to
the subak, often with the aid of overhead aqueducts or long tunnels”
Individuals
in a subak form a congregation that becomes affiliated with the
activities of particular temples. Geertz notes that within the subak,
congregation members prepare offerings to the gods, repair and decorate
temples, clear small field canals, and make repairs to water channels
(232, 241). The communal efforts of the subak members, strongly linked
with religious ritual, contribute to the social integration of Balinese
society.
According to Lansing, the Temple of the Crater Lake
stands at the summit of the water temple system, and through its
association with the Goddess of the Lake claims authority over the water
in all of the irrigation systems of Bali (Priests 74). Rituals and
ceremonies are conducted by priests and involve the entire community.
Lansing describes a festive ceremony of song and dance in which priests
bless holy water, distribute it among the subak channels, and give
thanks to the gods for the new harvest cycle (The Three Worlds 64). The
flow of holy water, originating from the Temple of the Crater Lake,
establishes hierarchical relations between temples and symbolizes social
relationships in the process. Lansing indicates that the downstream
flow of holy water through lower-order temples parallels an individual
caste ranking and the entire system of rural class stratification
(Priests 71). The connection between agriculture and religious ritual
has not only fostered a tightly knit community but has also promoted
natural farming methods based on religious cycles.
The planting
of rice seedlings, flooding of terraces, offerings at the temple altar,
and harvest rituals strictly abide by the subak cycle and the Balinese
calendar (Lansing, Priests 67). As well as providing a cyclical
agricultural method, the water temple system also employs a form of
artificial ecology. Lansing alleges that the flow of water is alternated
between wet and dry phases which results in such biochemical benefits
as the circulation of mineral nutrients, the formation of nitrogen and
natural fertilizer, and the preservation of nutrients in the soil
(Priests 39). Balinese farmers utilize natural pest control without
harmful pesticides. Lansing indicates that pests such as the brown
planthopper are contained by drying or flooding fields and driving
flocks of ducks through rice paddies to eat insects (Priests 39).
Therefore, the ritual-based temple system is responsible for the
organization of daily activities, farming schedules, and religious
ceremonies. Water flow encompasses a dual nature as the flow of
irrigation creates the hydro-logic dependency of farming while the flow
of holy water creates the social hierarchy of ritual and culture. The
Dutch colonizers and the Green Revolution planners never understood this
important duality of agriculture and religious culture.
Historically,
the Dutch imposed a bureaucratic capitalist system in Bali, a structure
that set the stage for future disaster in the Green Revolution. Driven
by the commodity market, the Dutch formed the Dutch East India Company
in 1602 and colonized most of Indonesia by the early 1800s. Between 1870
and 1910, the Dutch had converted the islands into a unified colonial
dependency expanding roads, railways, and shipping to serve the needs of
the new plantation economy (Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM). Lansing
writes:
“The classical states of Bali were not merely conquered
but obliterated: the people killed, the libraries burned, the palaces
reduced to rubble. It is all the more remarkable, then, that the
cultural and institutional life of Balinese civilization, in fact, able
to survive...The real roots of this civilization lay elsewhere, in
intertwining networks of thousands of temples where the power of the
myths was guarded, nurtured, studied...(The Three Worlds 49)”
While
Dutch colonialism radically altered Balinese society by abolishing the
monarchy and destroying visible signs of culture, the temples endured
untouched and maintained their importance in constructing Balinese
culture. Lansing notes that Dutch observers did not understand the
decentralized system of irrigation and the importance of water temples
in agricultural production as they abandoned any attempts to intervene
in water management solely allowing the ancient system to transpire
(Priests 109). The Dutch installed an irrigation bureaucracy, which
consisted of collecting taxes, performing land surveys, and building
irrigation works, yet they remained clueless as to the vital role of
water temples in both agriculture and social organization.
The
wave of imperialism in the nineteenth century urbanized the land and
commercialized production of several cash crops including rice, tea, and
opium. Because rice was a large source of government income in Bali, it
prompted the Dutch to improve the managerial system with a firm
bureaucracy and taxation on rice lands. Lansing states:
“because
the Dutch model of irrigation vastly underestimated the complexity of
the socio biophysical systems involved in rice production, water temples
and bureaucracies coexisted without creating technical problems in
irrigation control. Most Balinese rice terraces continued to produce two
crops per year, as they had before the arrival of the Dutch (Priests
127)”
This institutional framework allowed the Dutch to transform
rice into cash crop and begin exportation. When Bali gained their
independence in 1950, they continued on a path towards development based
on the bureaucratic capitalism imposed by their colonizers. They were
trapped in the colonial system and did not return to the decentralized
ways of the pre-colonial era. Consequently, the irrigation bureaucracy,
which altered traditional Balinese society, provided an accommodating
framework for the Green Revolution to operate.
As the Dutch had
done many years earlier, the Green Revolution was an attempt to convert
rice from a subsistent crop into a cash crop. However, the engineers of
the colonial age had little technology to offer whereas the Green
Revolution offered new agricultural technology such as chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, and new breeds of miracle rice and a $54
million dollar scheme of modernization (Balinese Water Temples). This
large-scale development project began at the International Rice Research
Institute in the Philippines and was implemented in Indonesia in 1967;
the program, known as Massive Guidance, furnished new agronomic
practices to farmers (Lansing, Priests 112). In Bali, the Bali
Irrigation Project was launched in 1979 by the Asian Development Bank in
order to improve the performance of irrigation systems while
disregarding the practical role of water temples (Lansing, Priests 113).
All of the new changes contradicted the natural agricultural system
based on ritual and religious cycles. Lansing writes:
“The Green
Revolution approach assumed that agriculture was a purely technical
process and that production would be optimized if everyone planted
high-yielding varieties of rice as often as they could. In contrast,
Balinese temple priests and farmers argued that the water temples were
necessary to coordinate cropping patterns so that there would be enough
irrigation water for everyone and to reduce pests by coordinating fallow
periods (Priests 117)”
The bureaucratic procedures that changed irrigation patterns and cropping cycles eroded the religious culture and agricultural-religious ritual of Bali and led to the demise of the project.
While the first few years brought greater harvest,
Massive Guidance quickly led farmers into ecological collapse. The lack
of crop rotation and natural planting cycles resulted in less productive
fields and the use of chemicals and pesticides backfired as the
infestation of the brown plant hopper destroyed hundreds of acres of
rice crop (Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM). The absence of natural pest
control and the application of the new pesticides killed the good
insects that used to eat the brown plant hopper. Besides the
agricultural downfall, there were socio-cultural consequences of the
exclusion of the water temple system as discovered by Lansing in his
analysis of the development project. He declares:
“The model
supports the conclusion that the social organization of cropping
patterns plays an important role in the management of terrace ecology.
The real productive significance of the ritual system is not in the
imposition of fixed cropping patterns but in the ability to synchronize
the productive activities of large numbers of farmers. The water temples
are a social system that manages production, not a ritual clockwork
(Priests 123)”
Water temples are necessary not only to prescribe
proper irrigation and natural pest control but also to organize social
activities such as ceremonies and holidays among the farmer
congregation. The Green Revolution in Bali and other Southeast Asian
countries was a failure because developers failed to recognize cultural
practices and natural agricultural systems.
In the 1980s and
1990s, governments began to implement new procedures and return to the
decentralized systems of the past in order to counteract the problems
generated from the Green Revolution. The Indonesian government has
employed a project known as Integrated Pest Management to reduce
pesticides and create sustainable agriculture and land use. Ralston,
Anderson, and Colson indicate that involvement in development projects
trains rural people new skills, familiarizes them with government
channels, and gives them the opportunity to become better citizens of
their countries (115). Integrated Pest Management follows this ideology
as scientists and officials train farmers natural pest control methods
and instruct them in the monitoring of pest and water levels thus
combining both ritual and science.
Lansing’s analysis of the
effects of the Green Revolution on Balinese agriculture persuaded the
government to acknowledge the importance of the water temple system. He
notes that in response to the threat of severe toxic contamination from
pesticides and gradual loss of soil fertility, the government of Bali
now strongly supports the use of traditional techniques of coordinated
fallow periods as the primary methods of pest control (Priests, 41). The
return to natural methods has restored the agricultural-religious bond
and the ritual of temples in Balinese society. Lansing contends:
“The
water temples must, therefore, be understood, not only as a system of
irrigation management but in terms of their role in the process of
sociogenesis...The ritual system is not merely a gloss on productive
relationships, for in the long run it is the social relationships
constructed by water temples, not the mechanics of water flow, that
create and sustain the terrace ecosystem (Priests 129-130)”
In
the water temple system, religious bonds are reaffirmed between farmers
while the caste hierarchy is observed between temple, weir, and subak.
This solidarity has fostered an organized congregation of farmers united
by religious ritual who partake in efficient agronomic methods.
Therefore, the failure of the Green Revolution has proved that
decentralization is more successful than bureaucratic farming methods.
The bureaucratic system first imposed by the Dutch, and later utilized by the Green Revolution, oversimplified irrigation into a function of the rational state. Lansing maintains:
“The state claims to control
irrigation at any rate, to manage terrace ecology hollow. In reality,
subaks were not autonomous units; terrace ecology could not be sustained
by continuous rice cropping; and water temples played a major role in
hydrological and biological management(Priests 128)”
The
bureaucratic irrigation complex failed because it contradicted the
native decentralized system of temple ritual and agriculture in Balinese
society. A decentralized planning strategy is beneficial since it tends
to favor indirect, non-central government control while empowering
local people by giving them command over their project (Ralston,
Anderson, and Colson 113). The water temples create a decentralized
system in which priests and farmers control the land under a religious
hierarchy rather than the central government. Scientists and economic
policy makers who designed the Green Revolution did not consider the
viewpoint of farmers, the very individuals who were the project’s main
beneficiaries. These farmers were instructed to adopt a Western style of
farming that was incompatible with their culture, history, and natural
agriculture. Therefore, it is essential in any development project that
planners understand local-level control and acknowledge the culture of
the particular nation.
In its unsuccessful attempts to capitalize
rice as cash crop, The Green Revolution ravaged the environment,
culture, natural agriculture, and water temple system of Bali. The
primary downfall of the project lied in the fact that developers failed
to distinguish both symbolic and instrumental roles of the water temple
system. In one aspect, the temples are religious institutions that
dictate worship to the gods and schedule liturgies for the congregation.
On the other hand, they also coordinate agricultural cycles and
irrigation flow creating a social caste hierarchy. This decentralized
temple system was altered when the Dutch imposed their own bureaucratic
framework. However, guided by the Green Revolution, governments usurped
control of agriculture from the temples intent on capitalizing farming
in their territories. Hence, removing the control of temples not only
deteriorated agriculture but affected the entire society since temples
play such a major role in social organization of ritual and daily life.
Development projects, such as the Green Revolution, that are fueled
solely by the commodity market generally do not succeed since the goal
is profit, not the self-sustainability of rural peoples. Nevertheless,
while Bali and many other communities still encounter the aftermath of
the Green Revolution, there has been increasing agronomic success with
the return of the indigenous Balinese water temple system.
Works Cited
Lansing, J. Stephen. (1991). Priests and Programmers. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lansing, J. Stephen. (1983). The Three Worlds of Bali. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Geertz, Clifford. (1967). Tihingan: A Balinese Village. In Koentjaraningrat (Ed.), Villages in Indonesia (pp.209-243). New York: Cornell University Press.
Anonymous. (1997). Balinese Water Temples. National Science Foundation. [On-line]. http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/nuggets/015/nugget.htm
Ralston, L., Anderson, J., & Colson, E. (1969). Voluntary Efforts in Decentralized Management. Berkley: University of California Press.
Agricultural Management. (1998). Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM.
Indonesia and its History. (1998). Encyclopedia Britannica CD-ROM.
Taken from http://gogreenmycountry.blogspot.co.id/2008/11/socio-cultural-impact-of-green.html
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