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The government is using the economic downturn in Indonesia to justify their plans to merge all of Borneo's 11 provinces into three Mega Provinces. But this won't be the first time Indonesia has tried mergers. A 2008 attempt was met with resistance from local communities, which argued they would lose important services without their autonomy, so it failed miserably. This time, I argue that the government should avoid this fate by listening to locals rather than trying to appease them with promises of better education and healthcare. If they're given practical autonomy over what happens in their own province, local resentment will surely dissipate. And if not? Well then they'll just have another failed merger on their hands like 2008. Merging provinces has been a hot topic issue in Indonesia lately. The government has expressed interest in merging six of Borneo's 11 provinces into three. One challenge they face is that Borneo, a resource-rich island that spans over three thousand kilometers from east to west, is characterized by highly diverse peoples and cultures. Some groups have been living on the island for over 40,000 years while others arrived as recently as the 19th century from Sulawesi and as far as the Philippines. There's an economic rationale to creating mega provinces. It would free up resources for regional development, improve education and healthcare services, increase the efficiency of local governments, create strategic partnerships between neighboring provinces that are now competing with one another for investment dollars, and reduce fuel costs by replacing short-haul flights with longer haul ships. It's a very attractive idea for this government which is looking to cut their fuel bill by 30% over the next three years. But the question they have to ask themselves is whether it's worth trying at all? Although there are many positive outcomes of mergers in theory, they often fail in practice because they dismiss the needs of locals who are afraid they'll lose services that are important to them. The big concerns in Borneo are that mergers may lead to a decrease in autonomy, a loss of local control over their education and healthcare systems, and a decrease in funding for development. In fact, Indonesia's 2004 merger of the provinces of Riau and North Sumatra created much consternation among locals when they lost their decision-making authority over how much each district would get from the national budget. Because they felt neglected by Jakarta, their representatives in parliament were not given a large enough budget to provide the kind of services that were important to them. In order to minimize resistance from locals, the government should consider creating distinct economic regions based on existing linguistic boundaries which would then be managed by eight provincial governments. Furthermore, they would have to give more autonomy to these regions so that they could determine what services are important to them outside of the capital where the federal government is located. They should also encourage local cross-province collaboration by creating shared infrastructure networks of roads, airports, and seaports across the country. This will reduce the cost of transport for goods which will make it cheaper to buy goods from other provinces. This means there will be more opportunities for exporting goods out of Borneo, increasing its regional economic competitiveness. Finally, they should create five Mega Provinces on Borneo based around these new shared infrastructure networks. cfa1e77820
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