There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Peter Sondakh and the Harvard Connection

There is some interesting news of a huge gift given to Harvard University, ostensibly to boost Indonesian studies at one of the world’s top universities: 

A $20.5 million gift -- described as one of the five largest in the Kennedy School's 74-year history -- is funding the creation of a new Institute for Asia as well as a new Indonesia Program at the Kennedy School. The Kennedy School today announced the gift from the Rajawali Foundation, the charitable arm of the PT Rajawali Corporation, one of Indonesia's largest conglomerates. The private company, founded in the early 1980s by billionaire owner and director Peter Sondakh, is a major player in cement, retailing, palm oil, hotels and other industries. 

Source: Boston.com 

This is good news of course because the US has a pretty poor reputation when it comes to research on Indonesia. So hopes are high the gift will lead to better research on the world’s largest archipelago. But why has Peter Sondakh made the gift? For purely altruistic reasons I hope, but if you’ve ever studied economic psychology you’ll know that people very rarely give money away for nothing. 

And as for the money being donated to a foreign university rather than to a university in Indonesia, that should also raise a few questions, I think. 

According to Professor Anthony Saich, director of the renamed Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School, not many Indonesians study at Harvard: 

 "I think that one of the big advantages of this gift is that Southeast Asia generally has been poorly studied and understood across Harvard, and we have barely one or two students here a year from Indonesia". 

 Well that might be true. But just look at who they do have!

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