A Meal Program Nobody Could Stomach

Pero necesitas buena organización.

But you need good organization.

That's the thing, isn't it.

A school meals program isn't just a budget line.

It's a supply chain.

It requires farmers, kitchens, logistics, oversight, refrigeration.

And you're doing this across thousands of islands simultaneously.

Brazil took years to build Bolsa Família into something that worked.

India's midday meals program has been running since the 1990s and still has enormous gaps.

La comida y la política son siempre juntos.

Food and politics are always together.

Siempre.

Always.

Always.

I covered a story in the nineties about food aid in post-conflict Bosnia.

The humanitarian organizations had all the funding in the world, and half the supplies were rotting in warehouses because no one had built the distribution system.

The problem isn't usually the food.

It's everything around the food.

Y los estudiantes de Indonesia protestan ahora.

And Indonesian students are protesting now.

No solo por la comida.

Not just because of the food.

That's important context.

The food program is one part of it.

There's also a fuel price hike, concerns about government spending priorities, and a broader frustration with the Prabowo administration.

But the food program has become a symbol, and symbols matter.

En Indonesia, los estudiantes tienen mucho poder histórico.

In Indonesia, students have a lot of historical power.

En 1998, los estudiantes cambian el país.

In 1998, students changed the country.

That's a crucial point.

1998 is when Suharto fell, after thirty-two years in power.

It was student protests, largely, that pushed him out.

Any Indonesian leader with historical awareness knows what it means when students take to the streets.

It's not just noise.

Prabowo es militar.

Prabowo is military.

Él tiene historia con ese año 1998 también.

He also has history with that year 1998.

He does, and it's complicated.

Prabowo Subianto was a special forces commander during the Suharto era.

He was Suharto's son-in-law.

He was accused of human rights abuses during those 1998 protests, specifically the disappearance of student activists.

He was never tried.

He rebuilt his political career over decades and won the presidency in 2024.

The man is not simple.

Y ahora los estudiantes protestan contra él.

And now students are protesting against him.

La historia es muy interesante.

History is very interesting.

It's almost theatrical.

The man who was present at the crushing of student protest in 1998 now faces student protest as president.

And his answer to that was supposed to be a school lunch program.

Feed the children, build legitimacy, rewrite the story.

It was a calculated bet.

La comida como política.

Food as politics.

'Yo te doy de comer, tú me das tu apoyo.'

'I feed you, you give me your support.'

It's one of the oldest transactions in governance.

The Romans had bread and circuses for a reason.

The problem is when the bread doesn't arrive, the bargain collapses, and you're left with the circuses and without any goodwill.

En España también.

In Spain too.

Los políticos hablan mucho de comida en las elecciones.

Politicians talk a lot about food during elections.

Everywhere.

Food security is political dynamite in any developing economy.

When prices go up, governments fall.

Egypt 2011, the bread riots were part of what fed the Arab Spring.

Haiti 2008, food riots killed the prime minister's career.

The price of rice in Indonesia is a political fact, not just an economic one.

El arroz es muy importante en Indonesia.

Rice is very important in Indonesia.

Es la comida principal.

It's the main food.

No es como el pan aquí.

It's not like bread here.

The anthropology of staple foods is fascinating.

In Indonesia, the word for rice, 'nasi', also colloquially means food itself.

If you haven't eaten rice, you haven't eaten.

It's the same conceptual weight that bread carries in Spain, or pasta in Italy.

The staple isn't just a calorie source.

It's cultural bedrock.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y por eso, cuando el programa falla, la gente está muy enojada.

And that's why, when the program fails, people are very angry.

No es solo dinero.

It's not just money.

It's a broken promise made in the language of something sacred.

And to students who are already worried about fuel costs, government corruption, and where Indonesia is headed, the image of a child receiving a plate of plain rice under the banner of 'nutritious meals' is a perfect, furious metaphor.

Prabowo dice que el programa necesita más tiempo.

Prabowo says the program needs more time.

Pero los estudiantes no quieren esperar.

But the students don't want to wait.

The government's defense is, look, this is an enormous undertaking, of course there are problems in year one.

And that's not entirely unreasonable.

But the scale of the reported corruption suggests this isn't just growing pains.

And when a fuel price hike lands on top of a failed food program on top of general economic anxiety, the combination is combustible.

Fletcher, ¿tú crees que el programa puede funcionar mejor en el futuro?

Fletcher, do you think the program can work better in the future?

That's the honest question, and the honest answer is: maybe.

Brazil's Fome Zero, Zero Hunger program, was chaotic at first and eventually became one of the most successful poverty reduction programs in Latin American history.

But it required political will to fix the problems rather than deny them, and it required time that the government earned through transparency.

Prabowo's team would need to do both.

That's not a small ask.

La comida de los niños es muy importante.

Children's food is very important.

Cuando funciona bien, los niños aprenden mejor.

When it works well, children learn better.

The evidence on that is extraordinarily strong.

Studies from India's midday meals program show measurable improvements in school attendance and cognitive performance when children are fed properly.

Hunger is not just a welfare issue.

It's an education issue, an economic issue, a thirty-year compounding problem.

Get it right and you can lift a generation.

Get it wrong and you've wasted the money and deepened the cynicism.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Es una pena.

It's a shame.

La idea es buena.

The idea is good.

La ejecución es muy mala.

The execution is very bad.

And that gap, between the idea and the execution, is where political credibility lives or dies.

The students in the streets aren't just angry about food.

They're angry about that gap.

They're saying: you promised us something, you had the money, and you failed.

That's a hard charge to answer.

Oye, Fletcher, antes yo digo 'ejecución'.

Hey, Fletcher, earlier I said 'ejecución'.

Pero tú usas esa palabra también en inglés, ¿no?

But you use that word in English too, right?

Execution, yes.

Interesting word to land on, actually.

In English it means carrying something out, but it also means, well, putting someone to death.

Same double meaning?

Sí, los dos significados son iguales en español.

Yes, both meanings are the same in Spanish.

Pero hay otra cosa.

But there is another thing.

Yo digo 'la pena'.

I say 'la pena'.

'¡Qué pena!' significa 'what a shame'.

'What a pity' means 'what a shame'.

Pero 'pena de muerte' significa 'death penalty'.

But 'pena de muerte' means 'death penalty'.

So 'pena' carries both shame and punishment at the same time.

That's a heavy word doing a lot of work.

Sí.

Yes.

Y también 'pena' significa tristeza.

And also 'pena' means sadness.

'Tengo pena' significa 'I am sad'.

'Tengo pena' means 'I am sad'.

Tres significados en una palabra.

Three meanings in one word.

Shame, punishment, and sadness.

A pretty complete emotional triangle for what's happening in Indonesia right now, now that I think about it.

Sí, Fletcher.

Yes, Fletcher.

Eso es exactamente correcto.

That is exactly right.

Hay pena, pena, y pena en Indonesia.

There is shame, punishment, and sadness in Indonesia.

Three kinds of pena and a plate of plain rice.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

We'll be back next time.