On a recent trip to Jakarta, I experienced firsthand what an infrastructure bottleneck feels like. My driver told me the city is only third in global traffic-jam rankings, trailing Mexico City and New Delhi, but what was a 40-minute ride when I lived there in the mid-1980s took a dispiriting 2½ hours. It's not exactly the image evoked by the current nation-branding campaign: "Remarkable Indonesia."
As we crept along the highway, I learned that the congestion that day was due to street protests by factory workers calling for a 50 percent raise from their current $220 monthly wage.
Sharp inflation has seriously reduced purchasing power following the government's decision earlier this year to slash fuel subsidies. Nonetheless, in the end the factory workers only got an 11 percent raise from Jakarta's popular Gov. Joko Widodo, known as "Jokowi," who is widely expected to become Indonesia's next president after the 2014 elections.