An Indian professor once was invited to deliver a general lecture in Malang Islamic University (UIN – Universitas Islam Negeri) East Java. From Surabaya airport he went to Malang city by bus. After coming back to India, he told us, Indonesian students in India, his impression thus:
Between Surabaya and Malang, I was so amazed to see so many hypermarkets, great supermalls and big restaurants. I saw a restaurant which is so big that I never see it before in India. What “amazed” me even more was that I did NOT see any public library at all.
He then blasted (with “emphaty”) a question that unable us to answer with pride: “So, what are you people doing other than shopping and eating out?”
Greg Barton in his The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) writes that during his 13-year stay in Indonesia he hardly find any middle class Indonesian who has got even a decent private library. Gus Dur’s big private library, therefore, is a once-in-blue-moon phenomenon.
The Indian professor criticism is understandable. In India public library can be found almost everywhere for anyone to read. Not to say in universities. Among the middle-class Indian, having a good private library is a must and something they are proud of. Consequently, with this conducive enovironment, the reading habit among the average Indians are higher than any other developing countries. The low price of newspaper (with only IDR 300 or Rs 2 Indian rupees) you can get best selling English newspaper such as The Times of India or The Hindu. You need IDR 3,000 to buy newspaper like Kompas, Jawa Pos, or The Jakarta Post. In a country like Indonesia where millions of people earn less than a dollar (IDR 9,000) a day, that amount is huge.
Library in Universities: Many university library are open for 24-hour a day. And amazingly the library is always packed with student who are reading either the text books or international journals and other general stuffs. You will hardly find this in Indonesia where a library is packed with readers who are quietly reading their respective books.
Lessons learnt:
1. Governments and lawmakers both need to synergize to make a policy which is conducive to boost reading habit as a hobby both for people and students by (a) lowering the price for goods which is having to do with paper production (books, newspapers, magazines); (b) encouraging people and students to read more by establishing a good library in every village.
2. What Indonesian middle-class can do: (a) shopping books more rather than clothes and other luxurious stuffs: it’s a lot better off to have a good brain than a good car; (b) helping the poor people to have access to read more by contributing and donating to any public library available preferably in remote areas; (c) setting library themselves in any given villages they prefer to set up.
I myself have a long plan to set up a decent library at least in every village around me which could expand to another neighboring area one day. I just set up one currently. Hopefully, this will have a domino effect to other like-minded people to do the same.
[...] And that’s why, some foreign academicians who come to Indonesia were a bit shocked to find out the lack of reading and writing habit among Indonesians even within the so-called middle class family. The lack of reading naturally would end up in the [...]