The disruptive authority and digital revolution in Indonesia.

The digital economy, one of the fastest-growing sectors today, is essentially changing the way we live. It revolutionized how we run things, how we execute the transactions, how we manage the data, and many others.
Indonesia, known for its notorious use of gadgets and internet services, has been a big market for the digital economy. We have witnessed how the innovative start-up rose to be the biggest in the market. Gojek, bukalapak, tokopedia, and the list goes on.
They represent progress, innovation, technology, changes. In economic terms, they symbolize “the creative destruction”, as Schumpeter put it. Because when it happens, the old ways, old technologies, and the old players who cannot adapt, will be taking the tolls. So it is quite reasonable to see such a debacle meets tremendous resistance.
The defense of the old side will be relying on traditional and conservative norms, as we often see in Indonesia. One of the most famous instances was when gojek started taking over the market of ride-hailing services in Indonesia. The ministry of transportation takes an unexpected action. They banned gojek’s service using the old 2009 law. Only after the president’s intervention by slamming the ministries move, the ban be lifted.
The story is repeated by the state-owned communication giant, Telkomsel. In 2016, it blocks Netflix from its services. The move is simply seen as an effort to ban Netflix from entering the Indonesian market. This banned were not just utilizing conservative broadcasting principles, but also exploiting the conservative moral values held by most population in Indonesia. For this, Telkomsel gains popular support from the people.
Although Market power, consumer demand, adam smith’s invisible hands, or any natural force whatever you may call it, finally break the resistance, it’s clear to see that in this country, changes did not come easy.