Taken from ‘Bungklang Bungkling’, ‘Desa’, a column by I Wayan Juniartha, as published in Bali Post, Sunday, 31st January 2010. Translated by Putu Semiada
Desa (Village)
“What does desa mawacara, negara mawa tata mean?” asks a member of the group.
“It means that the state should not interfere too much to the village’s business,” I Wayan Nigting Tangkah replies (I Wayan Beating Chest).
Wayan is known as a ‘hero’ in his village. He always cares when there is a problem in his village.
Two days ago he led his fellow-villagers to demolish the water tank built by the Local Public Work Department office. The water tank is used to save water from the village’s spring and distribute the water to the neighbouring villages that have no water resources.
“I don’t understand what the local government is doing. They want to conquer our spring. They don’t know that it belongs to us.”
Wayan doesn’t seem to understand anything about the constitution which states that the land, water and natural resources belong to the state. His mind is too narrow to understand this. He would never understand either how to live side by side with the people from neighbouring villages.
He knows that the spring in his village provides enough water for his village and other villages as well. But he is such a narrow-minded person that he claims that the spring belong to his village only, not the state. The problem is that Wayan’s fellow-villagers are also narrow-minded. They just agreed with Wayan when he asked them to demolish the public water tank. Some of them even played the gamelan to give support to their fellows.
It is said that the village situation reflects the characters of the villagers living in the village itself.
It has been difficult to find harmonious Balinese families who live in one compound. They are never able to live side by side. Instead, most of them envy one another. They are also rude to their own brothers or sisters. Sometimes they even use black magic.
When you can not leave harmoniously with your own family, how do you expect you can do it with your neighbours? This is a fact we have in Bali. If a neighbour of yours is success, you will envy them and hope they will suffer a loss.
You are supposed to be happy when your neighbours are successful. The reason is that they will be in better position to help you when you need their help.
The fact is, when a neighbour of yours buys a new car, you will envy him. You think that he gets the money from corruption or using black magic. This situation may develop into worse situation when many fellow-villagers hate him and that he might be in trouble when he dies, e.g. the villagers will not carry his cremation tower properly but ruin it instead.
The same thing happens at the village level. One village always tries to be more superior than the other, especially in matters of ceremony. When one village finds that its neighbouring village holds a ‘recharging’ ceremony (ngenteg linggih) which may cost Rp. 500 million, they might tear down their own temple so that they have a reason to hold similar ceremony that costs a lot more. Everybody in the village would think how the ceremony must cost 1 billion Rupiahs at least. They think that the more a ceremony costs, the more successful it is and the happier they are.
But nobody really cares about the problems such as: the money they use for the ceremony is usually a loan from the bank, and that they have to work very hard to pay it back; some villagers even are unemployed after a big ceremony as the places where they work fire them for being absent for a long time, due to the ceremony; the members of the ceremony (karya) committee debate on the use of the funds; there are long debates among the custodians during the long preparation of the ceremony.
What they want is just to show off and think that they are better than their neighbouring villages. It is no problem for them although it can make them go bankrupt.
In some ways the Balinese are still narrow-minded.
“We are in the 21st century. And Asia Free Trade has started which mean that foreign traders can sell everything in our country. So why you are still so narrow minded,” complains I Made Bali Jani (I Made Bali Now).
“I was born here, grown up, went to school, dropped out here as well and even will die here. I don’t give a damn about the ‘21st century’ or Asia or whatever it is” Wayan replies.
