THE National Mudflow Relief Team completed its task last Thursday. It also meant the end of an assignment for 58-year-old Basuki Muljono, the former Department of Public Works’ director-general for water issues, who has been on the job since September 2006. For the past seven months he had given up his air-conditioned office in Jakarta for the hot and muddy fields around Porong, East Java.

Basuki, who received his doctorate from Colorado State