Is It Possible Jakarta to Become [Cigarette] Smokeless?

Anywhere you go, either it is a remote place in the frozen climate close to the Arctic,  an arid desert in the middle of Sahara or a humid tropical rain-forest in Indonesia,  and not to mention densely populated cities everywhere in the world, you will find people smoke a cigarette. Jakarta is no exception. 

We have no idea how and when this strange habit first came up to people burning a bunch of dried tobacco leaves and sucking the smoke down into his lungs.  But one is certain, it was Columbus who was responsible for bringing tobacco seeds from America to Europe. From the WHO data, it is clear that tobacco is a major cause of death.  Globally the smoking-related deaths, which more or less reflect Indonesia condition, are 29 percent lung cancer, 24 percent heart disease, 16 percent chronic lung disease, 6 percent stroke, and the remaining are other various diagnoses.  

The tobacco companies in Indonesia produce an estimated 20 billion sticks a year or statistically every person in Indonesia, including children and babies, smoke more than one cigarette every day. The money burnt each year by the smokers is about Rp 20 trillion but that amount of money turns the business of cigarette on which many tobacco farmers, laborers, retailers, the cigarette industries as a whole and part of the government coffer depend on.   

 For the foreigners who visit Jakarta for the first time, they may smell some strong bizarre burning clove odor. That is the “kretek” cigarette, typical tobacco blended with clove, widely consumed by Indonesian people. Jakarta smokers have a bad habit of smoking anytime and anywhere wherever they pleased. They don’t care, no matter whether they are in the street, crowded train or bus, cinema, restaurants, amusement centers or else you name it. Whether you like it or not, you have to join inhaling the cigarette smoke or you have to leave the spot.  

With the aim to reduce the pollution of cigarette smoke, the city government has set an ideal program to free the cigarette smoke in Jakarta by 2012. Jakarta is the first area to initiate cigarette prohibition in its territory. The policy is now followed by many other cities such as Surabaya, Padang, Bogor, Lampung, Bukit Tinggi, and Denpasar. The policy is the strong commitment of the city governments to the health of the citizens. 

Jakarta Gubernatorial regulation No. 88/2010 regulating the smoking prohibition inside the buildings was put into effect since April 1, 2011, after it was socialized during the last six months consecutively since October 2010. The penalty for the smoker violating the regulation is exceedingly severe at Rp 50 million (US$ 5 thousand) but has never been implemented until today. Maybe because the penalty is so high that nobody puts it seriously. Once a  city-police caught a man smoking a cigarette and urged him to pay the fine. The accused took out his wallet and gave the police Rp10,000 (US$ 1) the only money he possessed. The law-enforcer gave him back the money and walked away saying nothing.

Within that time span, there were 92 buildings were considered bad related poor law enforcement related to non-smoking areas. Following the socialization of smoking prohibition issued by the city government, the citizens have got a better perception about it. Even Environment Controlling Body has received 169 complaints about locations which did not supervise yet the non-smoking areas. This indicates that Jakarta citizens have participated in the program. 

Despite protests from cigarette smokers, city government was determined to create clean air from cigarette smoke. Even the efforts are fully supported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Their representative in Jakarta said the Gubernatorial Regulation No.  88/ 2010 is in line with international rules. Tobacco is responsible for the death of 1 in 10 adults.

Indonesian Batik, the Masterpiece of Human Heritage

Indonesia should be proud of its cultural heritage as some of them have been recognized by UNESCO as the masterpiece of human heritage. Among those intangible heritages are traditional puppets (2003), "Kris" ceremonial knives (2005), traditional "batiks" (2009) and "angklung" bamboo musical instrument (2010). Now Indonesia has registered another three of its cultural heritage, namely Balinese traditional dance, Noken  Papuan handicraft and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII).

The foreigners who come for the first time to visit Jakarta may see the unusual sight of people wearing a colorful shirt. What they are wondering of is batik, a piece of cloth painted with various kinds of the composition of pictures or diagrams. It is a creative art design on a piece of cloth hand-drawn using a liquid candle as the media, to colorize the cloth surface area which is not covered by the liquid candle. The drawings with the liquid candle are done several times until you get the color combination as you wish.  UNESCO has recognized batik as the masterpiece of intangible heritage of humanity on October 2, 2009, following its far and wide fame.

In olden days, batik was worn by people living in Java. The people wore batik as early as the beginning of the 13^th century.  Up to the 18^th century, batik designs and productions were centered inside the kings’ palaces. At those days, before the liquid candle from oil product was available, people used the bee candle to draw the design. The colors were extracted from various plants and minerals.

At those days, both men and women wore batik as a sarong. The men used to wear batik sarong with a traditional dagger (kris) put at the waist. Batik was produced in such a way that its products were due to certain groups in social classes. There were batiks sarongs designed and produced for high class only. For a kind of batik with certain motifs, only the king and his families were allowed to wear it. Nowadays, we can still see the way of such wearing in the wedding ceremony where the bride and their parents wear such clothes imitating old style high-class wedding ceremony. 

In all, there are around 600 kinds of batik motifs in Indonesia. The cloth can undergo its sales in the form of a piece of clothes, trousers, or a sarong usually worn by women. The picture stands for good fate, high rankings of certain classes in the society or story in the past. Sometimes it resembles abstract paintings which need analysis to reveal its meaning.  The philosophy behind the drawing of a particular batik motif is related to the more subtle social background which needs insight and comprehensive explanation. 

Large scale batik production began only in 1920 when batik centers introduced textile printing machines. Most of its products were then uniforms and their artistic beauty faded away. As such the price became cheaper and common people could easily afford to buy batik products. 

Up to 1960s, batik was used only for sarongs and never for shirts. We are indebted to Ali Sadikin, the then governor of Jakarta, who encouraged the Jakarta citizens to proudly wear batik shirts as national identity. The campaign also accelerated the “swasembada” (national self-supporting) movement through the preference of using national products. 

The areas of batik groceries in Jakarta are mainly in Tanah Abang, from which all batik products are distributed to all over the country. As raw materials for batik are also sold there, some traders from Central Java moved to Jakarta producing their own batik. They brought workers from their home town causing in certain degree urbanization to Jakarta. 

With the aim to collect all kinds of batik designs from all over Indonesia, the Indonesian Batik Foundation (YBI) constructed a batik gallery inside the Indonesian Textile Museum. However, since the show-room allocated for batik is too small, not all batik designs are displayed at one moment. On every three-month period, the content of the gallery is replaced with the new ones. 

We expect that the city government is serious about their plan to construct a new Batik Museum by 2014 and allocate enough budgets for it. The realization of this museum would become a gesture of our appreciation toward batik’s international recognition not only as national heritage but also as the masterpiece of the whole humanity as it has been recognized by  UNESCO in 2009.

Jakarta’s IT Communications on the Move

The world is now without frontier. People are easily connected to each other by means of various IT media. The Indonesians and Jakarta people, in particular, are not the exception. As a country with a total population at around 230 million, the 4^th rank in the world, Indonesia is quite potential for any business activities, as the purchasing power is steadily increasing.

In the last two decades, Indonesia has experienced an  IT revolution that globally spread out and penetrated the country. The mobile phone started to penetrate the country in 1986 when most of the telecommunication media were the land-line telephones. The spectacular increase of the mobile-phone's users within that period has transformed the owner of the gadget from the haves to common people. Even today we can see, as a common view in Jakarta, a humble vegetable trader while pushing his merchandise carriage along with the alleys talks to his friend by using a hand-phone.

Five years ago, there were only 30 million subscribers connected to cellular networks, most of them were urban people. By 2008, the rural users outnumbering those living in the cities. By now, around 180 million people (78 percent of the populations) are connected to mobile phone networks. This means that almost every adult in the country possesses a mobile-phone. 

One of the big service providers in Indonesia had claimed that they alone had already 100 million customers. On the other side, the tele-stalls, called Wartel, which were flourishing at the early 2000s when most people still used land-line telephones, are now nose-diving due to the IT rapid development and the inexpensiveness of wireless communications. 

Reverberated by the diminishing customers and tough competition among the stall owners, many tele-stall owners are in the process of liquidation or converting their business into internet stalls, called Warnet. But the similar problem appears today from the Warnet business as people can now easily access the information from the internet by means of their mobile phones or a laptop accessible to the internet network.

Commercial Internet services in Indonesia were basically just commenced in 1995. In 2000, the internet users were around 2 million represented 1.0 percent of the population. Seven years later, the users increased to 20 million and now they are about 30 million representing 12 percent of the population in the country, with enormous potential market ahead.  


About 20 million of Indonesians use a variety of social-networking sites. The popularity of accessing social-networking sites over mobile phones has created a unique phenomenon in Indonesia. The number of people who use mobile phones to access the Internet is bypassing that of people who use computers for their Internet access. The lack of fixed-line infrastructure and the low price of mobile phones compared to computers have driven the phenomenon, especially in rural areas.

In Jakarta, among the active internet users who have their own blogs are still very low at around 130,000. They are from various layers of societies, including individuals such as students, lecturers, politicians, and businessmen as well as governmental institutions, social and political organizations, private offices, companies, and shopping centers for presenting their company profiles. 

For those who are frequently blogging, their characteristics can be detected due to the topics selected, the linkage of the topics with other websites and to the seriousness to handle the topics. 

Statistically almost every Jakarta resident possesses a hand-phone, and around half of the  Jakarta population are internet users, representing 16% of the total users in the country. The same number of Jakarta residents are also accessible to a website from their mobile phones. Among 130,000  bloggers registered in Jakarta, around 85,000 use Blogspot.com and the remaining use Wordpress.com. 


Due to the easiness to have a website, the number of blogs grows up rapidly.  Those who are dealing with internet and website should have realized that there is a big market of potential users in Indonesia specifically in Jakarta. The figures confirm this fact.