In contrast to the need for revolutionizing, our R&D spending is only 0.3% of GDP, a whisper compared to South Korea's 4.9%, Japan's 3.3%, Thailand's 1.2%, and even Malaysia's 1% (UNESCO, 2021). We graduate millions, yet fail to provide a space for their ideas. Our schools train minds that the system doesn't absorb. When education is divorced from policy, it becomes a wasted potential, a credential, not a catalyst.
In 2024, Indonesian youth NEET (not in employment, education, and training) figure reached 20.31%, higher than the regional average of 16.3% (BPS, 2025). Let alone the quality of education. In the 2022 PISA assessment by the OECD, Indonesia ranked 69th out of 81 countries in reading, 71st in mathematics, and 72nd in science. More worryingly, over 80% of 15-year-old students did not reach minimum proficiency in math and 66% in science, basic competencies needed for participation in the modern economy.
Now, our famed "demographic bonus" is starting to look like a liability. The labor force grows faster than the economy can absorb. Underemployment is rising, with over 59% of university graduates working in informal sectors or roles far beneath their qualifications (BPS, 2025). In 2025 alone, mass layoffs jumped 32% in just the first half of the year (Satudata, 2025). Tens of thousands of Indonesians have lost their jobs under Prabowo's watch. But the response? Almost nothing. While young people scramble to find secure, dignified work, the state busies itself with ceremonial gestures and artificial optimism. Being indifferent to the structural destruction below the surface.
We've become a nation of overqualified gig workers and undervalued youth, a symptom of what the Amartya Sen's Capability Approach critiques: development should be assessed not merely by income or access to resources, but by the actual opportunities people have to achieve meaningful beings and doings, to live the lives they value. It's not enough to report GDP growth or fiscal balance while our education system remains uneven, our research budget remains thin, and our job market fails to absorb the very talent it is meant to empower. What good is a growing GDP if the people fueling it can't afford stability or the ability to plan a future?
Paralyzed Institution, Stolen Future
We're not just standing on broken promises, we're walking through the ruins of systems that were meant to lift us. What was once called the engine of reform now feels like an empty shell worn down by political myopia. A nation's institutions are meant to be the architects of the future, helping generations thrive beyond the electoral cycles. But ours have grown tired from being bent so often to serve the urgency of the now. Where policy should be a compass pointing toward generational uplift, it has only been spinning to match the gusts of public opinion and quarterly optics.
Investments in sectors like technology, research, or education are often not "politically attractive" because their results aren't immediate. This links to Public Choice Theory, which explains how politicians may act in their self-interest, maximizing votes, popularity, or rents rather than public welfare. This gives rise to short-term solutions, where every crisis invites a new program. Over time, this has created a complex landscape, with overlapping efforts, each attempting to solve a problem without sufficient coordination, resulting in inefficiency. This disconnect becomes especially visible in poverty alleviation programs. In 2019, the poverty reduction initiative alone comprised 65 distinct programs and 128 separate activities managed across 16 different ministries and institutions, each acting within sectoral silos with minimal integration, ultimately weakening outcomes and wasting resources (Prasojo, 2022). Furthermore, in many programs, up to 70% of the budget is absorbed by bureaucracy and process, rather than being directed toward implementation that would directly benefit communities (Yanwardhana, 2023). Millions of young people grow up in a country that never truly prepares them for the global world, but the leaders instead focus on dressing up performance for quarterly reports.
This myopia breeds stagnation, and the youth see through this illusion. They sense that the system was not built for them. When space to grow, innovate, and contribute meaningfully is scarce, the rational choice becomes departure. Between 2019 and 2022, according to the Directorate General of Immigration, 3,912 Indonesian citizens of productive age renounced their nationality to become Singaporean. Thousands more leave quietly, not always to change passports, but to chase a better life that feels increasingly out of reach in our own land. This shows the nation's failure to build a future worth staying for. When bright minds see no place to grow, dreams find no soil to root, leaving becomes the logical next step.Â
Indonesia's institutions whisper ambition, but act out of fear, fear of losing popularity, fear of taking the kind of bold steps that won't pay off before the next campaign trail. And in that fear, they trade away the future to protect the present. Rather than a mere bureaucratic issue, this reflects a deeper failure in fulfilling institutional responsibility.
Will the Tiger Ever Rise Awake?
Indonesia is not short on potential. We are the fourth-largest country in the world by population, with over 283 million people, 69% of whom are in the productive age bracket. Our cities are swelling with youth, hungry for progress. But we know, potential alone doesn't move a nation forward. We must begin to hold the government to account, not only for what it builds today, but for what it neglects to build for tomorrow. A nation's strength isn't shown in how it extracts wealth, but how it transforms that wealth into opportunity for all. This means investing in a long-range goal for greater mobility and opportunity, not just for the elite, but for the many.
