Beware! If you are not a ‘son of the soil’, you can’t have any. Right across Indonesia, this is increasingly the attitude these days. And the culprit? None other than that would-be cure-all, regional autonomy, due to come in next month. These demands have nothing to back them up in the laws on which regional autonomy will be based. So where does it all come from?

During the 30-odd years of Suharto’s New Order, locals in t