I participated in ASA Sociology of Development Annual Conference and made a panel on plantation scholarships with Ara, Dhika, and Sofyan. Plantations in Indonesia are rooting strong, but so is the question of where the violence roots. Sofyan made a great reminder comment, “It started with a map.” And planning. Lots of planning. I was sitting down between a dozen of old planning papers. Chills run through my veins. In this transparent papers (kalkir), I wondered if these planners ever thought that there were people there, there would be people there. They did, however, plan for the housing complexes — or at least what looked like a housing complex.
Where are the rivers? The trees? What was before the plantation? Were there any elephants? Tigers? Some trees where a family of Orangutans could take a rest and play? But they are not even an index.
In the plantation bible, the genesis starts with: In the beginning the state created a map. Who would be on the map were blurry faces, hopes, and dreams — with a twist of desperation. Displacement is not accounted, for the map is the displacement in itself. In so many maps, there are notes on what to do, what we should fix. Plantations are the fixer, not the other way around. How many tractors that had killed these trees? I wondered. Who made the bridge? Were they paid handsomely? Are there cures for the landgrab of indigenous land?
Who proposed the contractors? Who made these maps? What went into their heads? Were there somebody who whispered, “Hey, should we plan for the existing people too?” The land was not yet cleared, but the map already created the fate for those pieces of land. Land for “public” facilities, bengkok land (village land) in the middle of Sumatra — how odd, and some blank plots just in case more palm oils were ready.
The owner of this map was really confident when he told me that the nuclear estate plantation is the best thing that ever happened to Indonesia. “We plan everything thoroughly, including where to invest next in terms of land and blank spots,” he pointed out some white squares next to the housing and palm oil plots.
They’re playing God.
Pravda Palma 
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