Gloomy prospects for the poor

WITH only one tenth of a hectare of unirrigated land, Ibu Tukini, her husband, Musirin, and their two children can only manage two crops a year. The 40-year-old woman lives in Kesuman Dua, a small kampung in the foothills of the Menoreh ridge, overlooking the broad and historic Kedu plain. 

The landscape is never still in Java. There is always movement, human activity: men working in the fields watering the tobacco plants; others tending to the freshly-harvested chillies; labourers dragging carts weighed down by aren tree trunks and women returning from a nearby funeral.