Pro-Poor Growth in Indonesia : Community Driven Development Approach

Poverty is a scourge for development of a country. Besides inhibiting the economic growth, poverty may also cause multidimensional problems. Thus, to solve poverty matters, many governments attempt to promote poverty alleviation programs in their countries. Currently, Community-Driven Development (CDD) Program has become one of the systems which is often practiced by developing countries in order to manage the poverty rate. Its basic concept is very simple. It empowers the communities, especially the poor, to unleash them from the shackles of poverty. In Indonesia, the government implements CDD Program through the so-called Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (PNPM) as the basis of the poverty reduction campaign. In its implementation, PNPM program requires the poor communities to get involved in such actions as participation in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the programs. A study of the success of the PNPM to eradicate poverty was conducted shortly after the program was launched in 2007. The results of the latest studies suggested that the PNPM will likely be able to reduce the number of poor people in Indonesia. Nevertheless, after running for several years, the program was terminated by the new regime at the beginning of 2015. Departing from this issue, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of PNPM as a means of alleviating poverty. Since most of the previous studies only focused on certain areas, this research paper is trying to formulate the role of PNPM at the national level. This study has come up with a conclusion that the PNPM is a workable instrument to achieve pro-poor growth, the growth which favours the poor. By limiting the definition of poverty in absolute terms, any increase in the PNPM funds, accompanying the economic growth, will likely reduce poverty more.