Ultimately the resources a nation has are the skills of its people and political will. No nations resources are limitless, and the Netherlands has far fewer real resources but much better skills and organizational capabilities.
The fact that the Netherlands was a former colonial power doesn't give them any "colony juice" that they can squeeze onto the ground and dams rise up like apple trees. They still have to design and build the thing given their smarts and labor, and Indonesia has to design the thing given their smarts and labor. The only difference is in the pool of available talent and the organizational abilities of the government to marshall that talent. Given Indonesia's much larger population and greater abundance of natural resources, it's a joke to suggest that it has no resources to build a dam whereas a tiny nation with fewer resources is able to do it. Indonesia's problem is that they are more corrupt and disorganized, and can't marshall their resources effectively.
The fact that the Netherlands was a former colonial power doesn't give them any "colony juice" that they can squeeze onto the ground and dams rise up like apple trees. They still have to design and build the thing given their smarts and labor, and Indonesia has to design the thing given their smarts and labor. The only difference is in the pool of available talent and the organizational abilities of the government to marshall that talent. Given Indonesia's much larger population and greater abundance of natural resources, it's a joke to suggest that it has no resources to build a dam whereas a tiny nation with fewer resources is able to do it. Indonesia's problem is that they are more corrupt and disorganized, and can't marshall their resources effectively.