Perkebunan dan Kesejahteraan

Abstract

This article discusess the relationship between plantation and prosperity. It compares two different political contexts of plantation operation, colonial and the post-colonial regimes. The starting point to discuss is wheter the different political context could make a strikingly different nature of plantation or the political context has nothing to do with the impact of plantations on the prosperity of the population. The article concludes that there is no single picture relating to the impact of the plantations. Both during the colonial and post colonial periods the plantations have created both the winners and the losers. The newly-designed policy of the independence government of Indonesia setting up PIR-Bun model has not been completely able to eradicate the exploitative nature of plantations in order to make the plantations beneficial to all parties. Even the model has been regarded as a new form of cultivation system (cultuurstelsel) run under the Dutch colonial regime