ABSTRACT
The Kedung Ombo experience is important as an extreme example of the conflict that can result when poor planning for resettlement by the authorities combines with almost total absence of input from those to be resettled. The resettler’s category consists of the households, and parts of households that joined the official transmigration program and were transported to resettlement schemes on the outer islands. Under policy and institutional constraints, transmigration is only a partial solution to involuntary resettlement problems in Indonesia. If transmigration could be targeted to specific and entire household units so that all members could transmigrate, then transmigration could be applicable; however, the receiving areas must be prepared in advance of recruitment of the people. Resettlement sites in Central Java recognized the most households would refuse transmigration and that land compensation rates were too low to allow all households to buy substitute land close to the reservoir.
