In the early 1970s a local leader in a poor suburb of Jakarta, Pak Sumitra, described for an American sociologist how political control was exercised on a local level. He described how Indonesia shifted from a society polarised between Communists and non-Communists, to one where a distant military government was able to pacify and manage the country. The new government's aim was to create the appearance of order and control.

Pak Sumitra was a veteran of the Revolution, like most political leaders of the times. During the struggle in Tegal, coastal Java, he had come across a magical stone that had protected him from harm when all his comrades were being killed. He attributed to this stone his ability to gain a following when he moved to Jakarta to work in the railway yards, where he became a foreman. The community of which he became leader consisted almost entirely of railway workers, many of whom were Communists. This man had an antipathy to Communists because members of his family had been killed by them during the conflict in Madiun in 1948.