The Comparison of Participation Level Between Urban-Type and Rural-Type Community in Supporting the Community-Based Village Road Development Program

摘要

Indonesia still faces many challenges to overcome the problem of the availability of basic infrastructure of settlement, especially for rural community. The limited resources possessed by the government have resulted in the empowerment of community to fulfill its basic infrastructure.One of the strategies taken is to develop various development programs based on community empowerment. Based on some experiences, the implementation of this strategy shows that there are various issues that need to be understood better. One of them is related to the characteristics of thebeneficiary. This strategy will be more suitable if it is applied to rural-type community rather than to urban-type community. This paper illustrates one of the results of a case study of village road construction program in the Regency of Magetan, East Java. This qualitative study attemptsto compare the implementation of the village road development program of two villages with different characteristics, namely Dadi Village, District of Plaosan-representing the highland/rural areas- and Malang Village, District of Maospatirepresenting lowland/urban areas. The study finds thatthe community with the rural characteristic is more suitable for implementing this program because of several things; First, this approach tends to raise conflict among parties, hence, a face-to-face interaction existing in the village community can minimize the chances of this conflict; Second,the presence of community leaders who plays an important role in mobilizing community resources are more easily found in rural communities; Third, although rural characteristics are socially more suitable, yet, in order to maintain the quality of construction carried out by the community basedon the prevailing standards, there should be a Technical Service Unit that oversees and accompanies the community.