Far from being praised internationally as a future giant economy, Indonesia's most basic performance, namely tackling the problem of hunger, turned out to be the worst in Southeast Asia. Based on data from the Global Hunger Index (GHI) or the Global Hunger Index, Indonesia has not experienced significant improvement over the last nine years. Let alone compared to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines, Indonesia's performance is even far below Laos and Cambodia.
Paradoxically, at almost the same time the number of rich people in Indonesia has increased five times. Indonesia is the most spectacular country with the fastest increase in the number of rich people in the world in this decade. The total accumulation of the 40 richest people has been equivalent to the wealth of 77 million people in 2011. Indonesia's inequality is now the worst in history with a Gini coefficient that has reached 0,41. This situation is urgently needed to be corrected before discontent explodes due to the increasingly torn sense of social justice.
Hunger Index Stagnation
In the period 2003 to 2012, Indonesia's position in the Global Hunger Index only fell from 12,47 to 12. The difference in the decline of only 0,47 is very far below other Southeast Asian countries. Vietnam performs 15 times better, Thailand 9 times, Malaysia 4 times, and even Laos 9 times better (see table).
The Global Hunger Index is an index to monitor the world's progress and failure in overcoming hunger based on country-by-country performance measures1. The indicators measured are the percentage of food shortages in the population, the prevalence of under-five under-five weight and the under-five mortality rate. The index is scaled from 0 (best) to 100 (worst) with several categories from low to very worrying levels of hunger (see table description). Indonesia's index is at 12, meaning the country is still in the "serious hunger" level category.