From “Chugga Chugga Choo-Choo” to “Whoosh Goes The Treasury”

Once upon a time, in the rather charming era of Ibu Soed, the railways of Indonesia were a thoroughly democratic affair. One could board a train from Jakarta to Bandung with a packed lunch, a cheerful disposition, and a ticket that cost roughly the same as a decent nasi bungkus. Nobody mentioned "foreign loan interest rates." Nobody needed to. The train went toot, the people were happy, and the national budget remained, one imagines, more or less intact. Bliss.

Then came the era of Elvy Sukaesih, the undisputed queen of dangdut, whose rhythms were best described as jug-gicak-gicuk—a sound that made one's hips move involuntarily and one's worries dissolve entirely. Trains were still the stuff of romance: a journey to Surabaya to visit Grandmother, a tin of nastar biscuits in one's bag, and the warm glow of a simple life well-lived. No briefcases stuffed with loan agreements. No emergency telephone calls from creditors in Beijing. Just the gentle rocking of a carriage and the passing of rice paddies.

But history, much like a high-speed rail project, has a terrible habit of accelerating before anyone has properly asked: "Right, and who exactly is paying for the tracks?"

Whoosh: A Train Faster Than the Government's Ability to Foot the Bill

Let us pause for a moment to admire the name "Whoosh." As onomatopoeia goes, it is rather good—evocative of speed, of modernity, of wind rushing past one's ears at 350 kilometres per hour. It sounds, frankly, magnificent. That is, until one contextualises it within the national budget, whereupon "Whoooosh" becomes less the sound of a train and more the sound of public funds making a hasty departure. And over time, the wind that shot out was not DC Comics' "Flash" or "Gundala's" lightning, but rather became wind that came out of the buttocks.

The Jakarta–Bandung High-Speed Railway does, to its credit, move at a tremendous lick. Forty-five minutes to Bandung! Marvellous! Extraordinary! One is almost moved to stand and applaud — until one idly wonders where the funding came from, at which point one sits down rather quickly and stares at one's shoes.

The project was financed through loans from China. Not modest loans, mind you — the sort of modest loan one takes out to replace a boiler. No, these are loans of the variety that bloat well beyond their original estimate, rather like a restaurant bill that arrives with seventeen separate "service charges" one had not anticipated. And like all debts of distinction, this one does not sit quietly: it compounds, it accrues, it reproduces, until one's grandchildren are born already technically in arrears.

The train dashes to Bandung at full pelt, not unlike a debtor who has spotted the bailiff at the end of the street.

The Irony Upon the Rails of Progress: An Uninvited Plot Twist

We inhabit a nation of extraordinary scale—an archipelago so vast it stretches across three time zones—and yet our infrastructure priorities have, on occasion, displayed a certain... flair for the dramatic. On one hand, there are schoolchildren in remote Kalimantan crossing rivers on rubber dinghies because the bridge predates their grandparents. On the other hand, there is a gleaming high-speed railway serving 142 kilometres between two cities that are, by Indonesian standards, practically neighbours.

Progress, one hastens to say, is not inherently objectionable. Progress is splendid. We are all broadly in favour of progress. The question—the rather persistent, irritating little question that keeps raising its hand at the back of the press conference—is simply: progress for whom, precisely?

I. A Rather Special Inheritance for Future Generations

Previous generations bequeathed to their descendants land, property, or at the very least a reliable recipe for beef rendang. The current generation, in a spirit of breathtaking generosity, is bequeathing something altogether more novel: the repayment schedule of an infrastructure project whose break-even point, according to analysts who have presumably not yet taken to drink, is expected to arrive sometime around the era of commercial space colonisation. The passenger projections underpinning this optimism are, one is reliably informed, somewhat more bullish than the meteorological forecast.

 

II. First-Class Tickets for a Decidedly First-Class Clientele

Whoosh does, admittedly, get one to Bandung in forty-five minutes. One applauds. However, the ticket price is such that a sizeable portion of the population has concluded that two hours in Jakarta traffic is, on balance, the more fiscally responsible option. This is not, one senses, quite what the brochure had in mind.

There is a rather delicious paradox at work here: a railway financed by the taxes of all Indonesians, yet patronised primarily by those for whom taxes are more of a theoretical concern. It is, in the grandest tradition of vanity projects, a lighthouse: the beam sweeps magnificently across the sea, but only those already standing on the headland get the view.

 

III. Benefits vs. Burdens: An Eternal Duel on the Balance Sheet

Supporters of the project will say, quite reasonably, that this is a long-term investment. They may well be right. Whoosh could indeed catalyse economic activity, improve connectivity, attract capital, and so forth. In the language of macroeconomic theory, the argument holds together tolerably well.

What the rather handsomely designed PowerPoint presentations tend to gloss over, however, is the following trifling detail: somebody is servicing the interest right now, today, at this very moment, while the long-term benefits remain, as yet, a series of encouraging projections. That somebody is, in the fullest and most democratic sense of the word, everyone — including Old Ujang, whose roadside stall has never once been patronised by a Whoosh passenger, and Bu Sari, who has no earthly reason to visit Bandung at speed or otherwise.

A Concise Glossary of Whoosh-Related Terminology

▸ Break-even point: The moment at which a project begins to pay for itself. In the context of Whoosh, this functions rather like the horizon — always present, perpetually retreating, never quite arrived at.

▸ Cost overrun: The polite term for when a project costs substantially more than initially advertised. In the vernacular: "Yes, well, it turns out we were a touch optimistic."

▸ Vanity project (proyek mercusuar): A project whose primary function is to appear impressive from a distance. The greater the distance, the more impressive it appears.

▸ Future generations: Those who shall inherit the invoice for decisions in which they had no vote and to which they were not invited.

▸ Interest payments: Not, one stresses, the interesting kind. The kind that grows quietly in the background, harvested by creditors, and paid for by the public.

Conclusion: Who Boards, and Who Foots the Fare?

In all fairness—and one does try to be fair—Whoosh is a genuinely impressive piece of engineering. The fastest railway in South-East Asia, running smoothly (one hopes) on time, and rather handsome to look at. If one has money to spare and a pressing need to be in Bandung within the hour, it is, by all accounts, a perfectly pleasant way to travel.

But as a nation engaged in the ongoing project of honest self-examination, it seems worthwhile to pause, amid the ribbon-cutting and the ministerial pronouncements, and ask a simple question: is this for everyone, or is it for some people, paid for by everyone?

Because the story of Whoosh is not, at its heart, merely the story of a train travelling at 350 kilometres per hour. It is the story of who gets to sit in the upholstered seats—and who stands at the side of the track, watching the future accelerate past them without stopping.

Where once the railway asked: "Who is alighting here?"

Now, beneath a mountain of debt, the question has rather changed:

"Who on earth can afford to pay?" 

Author's Note: This essay was written with equal measures of affection for Indonesia and concern for its finances. One sincerely hopes the railway proves its critics wrong, that the benefits materialise, and that the debt is somehow settled before one's grandchildren are old enough to read the repayment schedule. One is, at heart, an optimist. A deeply sceptical optimist.

— Finis —

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