Parasit Pembangunan

Abstract

This study investigated a phenomenon that locally called Salah Kaprah, in the forms of corruption, collusion and nepotism (CCN) or rent seeking behavior (RSB). Salah Kaprah is a kind of tolerated wrong-doing that is repeated until the wrong is perceived as right, and in the end this behavior is taken for granted. The CCN or RSB in Kampung Papringan and in Adikarta City has proved that such wrong-doing behavior has been happening.There were 2 to 3 ordinal motives or reasons for the rent seekers to involve in the CCN or RSB, namely survival motive, comfort motive, and hedonic motive. These 3 classes of motives representedlow, medium, and high levels of rent seekers' social and economic statuses (SES). These motives could be traced back from the history of human kind who always fought for getting statuses in their social space, through the possession of some or all of many forms of capital –economic, social, cultural, and symbolic. This natural human motive has encouraged people to chose more pragmatic means of getting or doing things. This means was represented by 3 keywords of ‘light, easy, and quick' so that people tend to behave according to the ‘light, easy, and quick' paths even though they had to break the laws.The wrong-doing behavior, like any other behavior, waspracticed by individuals in the process of modeling or imitation. Thus, the CCN or RSB, ceteris paribus, might initially be experienced by an individual and when succeeded, then repeated again and again. The success attracted others to imitate. Remember that the ‘light, easy, and quick' behavior was easier to copy than the ‘hard, difficult, and long' behavior mandated by any standard operating procedure (SOP). So, the Salah Kaprah has eventually become common practices.That is not all. To increase their production scale, the CCN or RSB was then undertaken in groups of family and relatives, friends,members of any associations or organizations. This was to improvetheir bargaining position in the games (CCN or RSB) they wereplaying. They developed an ‘in-group' mentality as oppose to the other as ‘out-group', because the CCN or RSB was a kind of clandestine activity or black market operation. So that norms of trust and reciprocity adopted within group was more specialized than generalized. Specialized trust and reciprocity was good in building bonding social capital between members of the group, but bad for those who were ‘out-group'. This was why the CCN or RSB was an activity in the dark side of social capital, because the social capital being used by the group produced social costs.Finally, the continuing wrong-doing eventually evolved to becoming one of many social values in the cultural sphere. This new evolving values joint perfectly with materialism, consumerism, and hedonism brought by economic, social and cultural globalization, has become a new emerging values. Then, the CCN or RSB found a new modern and powerful vehicle and has increased its capacity to lobby and even insist the policy makers to accommodate their interests into policies they were promulgating. When norms and values (informal rules) and laws and policies (formal rules) have been interfered for their favor, everything else could have been taken care of more easily. The foregoing description of motives, processes, and impacts of the CCN or RSB on development outcome of the community and the city was a portrait of weak institutions under the present rulers. This study indicates that new institutions needed to be initiated and implemented resolutely in order for the community and society to be free from any parasitic mentality of many agencies which have been breaking the laws thus far and have been sacrificing the overall social welfare.