A Selection of Essays

on various subjects, most mix professional experience with personal observations.

This appeared in the Kiev Post, on November 18, 1997, as "When decency takes a holiday":

An old woman from a nearby village spent her family's savings to buy the apartment next to our office in the center of Lviv last spring. Then she offered to rent it to us if we needed more space. We managed well enough in the apartment we had but it was a bit tight, so I told her I'd think about it and let her know. Several weeks later, long after she'd given the key to someone else, she came to me to say she feared for her life.

The tenants had failed to pay any of the promised $100 a month, but had begun some basic repairs and told her that was good enough. When she objected, she was encircled by several young men whose leader explained that they were in the business of finding apartments for people and so, as professionals in the business, they knew they were right. Besides, he added, the tax inspector would probably be very interested in where the money came from that she used to buy the apartment in the first place, so if she didn't want trouble....

It was only a few weeks after I'd said "let me think about it" that she asked me again if we would rent the apartment. Yes, I replied, but isn't it occupied? She said "they" would be leaving at the end of the week. They didn't, and that's when she felt threatened. Every couple of weeks throughout the summer she came in to ask if I would rent the place because, she said each time, "they" had agreed to leave.

Eventually, with the encouragement of three large young men from the village who posed as sons returned from Russia and in need of the apartment, the punks left without violence. The old woman never received any rent payments. In fact, she paid the punks $1,300 for the barely noticeable improvements they had made to the place.

Earlier, during one of her visits, I suggested that she hire a lawyer to advise her and bring a suit against them. At another I suggested she turn the tax inspector threat around on them. She listened politely each time, and after each meeting my assistant told me that the punks could pay the judge or whomever more than the old lady could, so she would lose any action in any court.

That reminded me of our own attempts to get something approved-- I forget what, a bank account maybe, or a phone line. We showed our papers from the ministries that give papers to organizations like mine, and the local clerks pointed out that the papers were issued in Kyiv, and that this is Lviv, you see, so you'll need this other certificate which you get by applying to someone who isn't here right now for a different certificate that you, as a foreigner, can't have.

Criminals in uniforms, clerks without the stones to come right out and ask for a bribe, and the judges who protect them are routine here, but I'm not complaining. They are the real reasons I have a job; if things worked here, there'd be no development programs to employ me. That simple reminder and my immediate access to flights west keep me on center.

But the old woman, Alyona is her name, she aged a few more years this past summer because a simple lease agreement, an honest investment, is an opportunity for the system, her fellow Ukrainians, to take everything she has.

This was also published in the Kyiv Post (May 20, 1999). It followed a particularly frustrating development effort.

The Third Serfdom

When a young man with virtually no experience assumes the directorship of a large enterprise, and when the hundreds of new shareholders vote unanimously to give him total control when that enterprise is later privatized, one could assume either that he is a man of rare ability or that there is something not quite cricket about it all.

Large collective farms in Ukraine are privatized by granting land titles to the farm's employees, residents, and retirees. Each receives 1-3 hectares of land according to a well-understood formula that most people consider fair. Typically, 95% of the new owners will lease their parcels to one director who will lead a restructured, commercial farming enterprise, and the remaining five percent or so will lease their land into smaller private farms of 10-50 hectares each.

The plan was simple. As part of the privatization process, the soon-to-be land owners should have the opportunity to learn something about operating a farm as a business. No longer could they operate a farm as a mechanism to feed the population. No, a farm is a business, we would explain, and before you sign over your piece to anyone, you should learn something about how a farming business works.

That was the plan. A fairly complete publicity effort was made, training materials printed, and the venue prepared. Out of a potential audience of 1,850 new land owners at the ironically named "Progress" farm in Brody, Lviv oblast, not one came to the seminar. Not even one person in this small town was even curious enough to stick his head in the door.

Either the abilities of the new director had inspired true awe and allegiance among the populace, or something was amiss. We asked around and were saddened but not surprised to learn that the director had made it known that no one was to participate in any training sessions. It was a deliberate effort to keep the people ignorant of the knowledge that might be useful in improving their lives.

Confronted with specific cases where direct efforts are made to derail reform, people deal with the frustration in different ways. An enraged scream can be useful. A resigned sigh is more common. This writer turns academic.

Feudalism as a system of social, economic, and political organization disappeared in England in the sixteenth century. In western Europe, it finally ended in the 1700's. In eastern Europe and Russia, however, it held on until 1861, the so-called "second serfdom".

The term was co-opted for use in describing collective agriculture of the Soviet Union after Stalin's policy of forced collectivization had transformed the peasant into the kolkhoznik.

Ukraine is forming a third serfdom as it transforms the kolkhoznik into a land "owner".

As we recall from our days at secondary school, feudalism is an intricate network of duties and obligations linking royalty, nobility, lesser gentry, free tenants, villiens, and serfs. The modern Ukrainian economy is an intricate network of duties and obligations linking the presidency, ministries, oblast administration, raion administration, farm directors, and titleholders.

A few hundred years ago, serfs lived on and worked the lord's land and were allowed some land for themselves. In present day Ukraine, peasants lease their parcels to the director and maintain household plots to grow enough food to keep themselves alive.

Serfs could not leave the estate. Now, of course, Ukrainians have some measure of mobility-- providing they have an external passport, an internal passport, and proper registration with the local ovir's office.

Much has been said and written about Ukraine's new economy, and much of it parallels this from Webster's Encyclopedia: "Feudal society was characterized by a hierarchy of authority, rights, and power enforced by a complex legal system under which the monarchy allowed vassals to hold land, administer justice, and levy taxes."

One could go on with the comparison-- the economist P. T. Bauer, among others, argues that uncompensated labor is a form of taxation, for example-- but 700 words is enough. The point is made. Now I'll think of something else, try to decide whether to scream or sigh, perhaps.

The project I directed some years ago in western Ukraine did a simple survey of the population in four raions of the Lviv oblast (600 interviews) in spring, 1999. It was our intent in conducting this research to learn about attitudes, values, and perceptions of the people of these areas in order to prepare more effective training sessions for new titleholders. I thought the results might be interesting to you as well.

Analysis of a survey of the rural population:

We assumed, and the results of a survey showed, that the perceptions and understanding the rural population has about business, free markets, and management are not terribly bad or wrong, but they are not fully or accurately formed either. The villagers are not unintelligent, but their understanding of many of the facts and assumptions we take for granted is not as solid as it needs to be in order to operate a business in a market economy. Operating a small farm means operating a small business.

What we might assume as common knowledge might not be so common among this segment of the population. Or, worse, their understanding might be clear in their minds but different from ours, and this difference might act as a filter through which they might interpret differently or inappropriately the information that builds on the assumption. For example, the survey showed that over 47% of the population believes that negotiation does not end when a contract is signed, and another 29% "aren't sure" it's finished. So if an instructor from the west moves from a point about a contract, by which he intends "final agreement", his students will be moving on a different line of reasoning because to them agreement has not yet been reached. This might be a minor point in the teacher's presentation, but as his line of instruction continues, the minor divergence magnifies, and the conclusion he reaches might seem wholly unsupported in the minds of the students, because they don't share the assumption of agreement, so the point the teacher is making could be lost entirely.

Anyway, the survey findings illuminated a few similar points for our trainers, but I don't want to bore you with that academic perspective. Instead, here are some general and possibly interesting findings of the survey:

They are very rural. 67% have lived in the same village their whole life and 24% more have lived there more than ten years. 96% said both parents are from rural areas. This clearly limits their range of experience and familiarity with other societies and other ways of doing things.

But they are not "serfs". Going into this survey, we wondered if peasant economics were at work, if the people in the villages were markedly different from our assumptions of rational maximizers. Within the survey, we placed 18 responses which we thought a true peasant might give-- faith/dependence on a central authority, profit should be shared with the community, collectives should not have been broken up, sustenance over gain, et al. Only 2% chose more than ten of these responses.

They are not that badly informed. They acknowledge they have something to learn about business. When asked how they might start a business, almost all listed some source of advice or counsel as a first stop. When asked what they felt they needed to learn from that source, 53.8% said "understand management, marketing, business planning, etc." 28.3% also said that they would "conduct market research and a feasibility plan".

When asked simply to define "business", 62.5% correctly said it was an activity designed to make a profit, and 42.6% said a contract should be used to "show the specifics of an agreement to the signatories", and 38% said it should "used to settle disputes".

However, they displayed plenty of poor, inaccurate knowledge. While these groups said contracts should be specific and can help settle disputes, less than 20% of all respondents said negotiation is finished once they sign.

When asked to define "business", 37.5% got it wrong. 12% said it is "an activity aimed at solving social problems" and 13% didn't know what it really means.

Some went further. 32% said "an efficient national government is most capable of improving conditions (in this raion)". Only 39.5% think products produced by private firms are "better than products of a few years ago" and only 15.8% think they are better than the state-produced products of today. When asked if imported products are worth higher prices, 57.6% said "no, never".

There is some entrepreneurial spirit. Operating a small farm means operating a small business, and we had been skeptical of estimates of the level of interest in operating a business among the rural population. We placed 16 responses in the survey that we felt would be typical of a "would-be entrepreneur"-- profit-oriented, interested in opening a business, interest in learning about various business topics, self-reliance, et al. 10.8% of the respondents chose ten or more of these 16 choices.

Yet, we sense mixed feelings about commerce. The respondents seemed equally split over whether a business could provide a living wage or would be just a sideline activity. And while a surprisingly large number, 37%, said "yes, very much" when asked if they were interested in starting a business, only that 10% displayed what might be called an entrepreneurial attitude.

We asked why there are so many imported food products in Lviv's stores, because we wanted to see how many would identify consumer demand as one of three reasons they saw. 23% did. But 52% said it was because of "profiteering by local businessmen". 25% said it was because of "profiteering by local criminals". (In fairness, I should add that 37% said it is because the prices were lower than locally-made items, and 34% said there are no locally-made substitutes.)

They see a very strong social role for businesses with nearly a third saying that "contributing to the community" or "giving to the poor" are what "a good manager" does with his profit. If they were to go into business, we asked what would motivate them. 56% people said that "they would do it so they could produce better quality products and services". But 83% said no when asked if a "product like cheese or sausage is packaged nicely, is it more likely to be good?"

We sense strength and even some optimism. Another response option to the question about why they might go into business was "to be responsible for my own life", and 38% picked it. Then we asked "who will make life better for your children?" 63% answered "I will", and only 5% said "it won't be better".

And 16.7% said "the national government" will make their lives better.

I attended a conference on micro-credit and a seminar on monitoring & evaluation in Spring, 2000. They were quite useful, and much of what was discussed applies directly to my work, but what I choose to write about doesn't apply at all as you see in this

Short piece on a visit to India

You haven't lived until you've heard an Indian street band with traditional instruments do "Mambo No. 5" in Hindustani. Imagine a kind of salsa rhythm behind the sound of several drunken cats. Anyway, I think it was Hindustani. It could have been any of the reputed 28 languages used on the subcontinent. India, most will tell you, is a land of enormous contradictions and contrasts brought about by the mix of several ethnic groups and religions with political points of view ranging from anarchy to socialism. From my short visit, a sensible presentation of India is impossible. A few snippets, though, might interest some.

I went to learn something about programs to lessen the harmful impact of poverty and visited some NGOs. One NGO guy took me to a resettlement camp. This resettlement camp is where some of Delhi's really poor were sent when the gov't decided it needed the land under their shanty town 8-9 years ago. It used to be a farm field on the edge of Delhi, now it's a slum in the middle of Delhi. It's a clean slum and a remarkably upbeat place.

The NGO had helped set up a micro-lending/saving program in which the poor residents pool what money they have and make loans to each other. They made loans of up to $200 with two months to pay. Other such programs make really micro-loans-- in Bangladesh, for example, a loan can be as small as a dollar and a half. They take the money to fix up their little houses or buy stuff for very small scale income generating activities like making and selling greasy little things made from flour and bacteria.

A little bit of curry at every meal,
a little bit of death is what I feel.
A little bit of cramping from the gas,
a little bit of fire coming out my ass.

Life in the slum didn't seem that terrible. It was clean. People were smiling a lot. They had a mosque and a Hindi temple. Kids were playing in the narrow streets. And Indian kids are very cute, by the way. Huge brown eyes and the thickest, blackest eyelashes in the world. There was one little girl almost as cute as my littlest. She was sitting in the sun, wrapped in a blanket, and showed me the brightest smile. She's 6. She has polio. In a few unpleasant years she'll be dead.

That sort of poverty is everywhere in the part of India I saw. They say it's worse in Calcutta and Mumbai and Bihar and ....

Why? Lots of reasons, of course. One of them is religion. I went to a very holy place of the Hindu faith, the place where Vishnu first appeared. It was an experience in itself, walking barefoot through a filthy, crowded village street, a little red dot on my forehead from the priest/tour guide, while I wondered which was more tacky, this holy temple or the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Certainly the circus museum is quieter and uses fewer colors. But anyway, that little insensitive comparison aside, on the walls of the temple, in English and Hindustani, were three selected verses from the Hindi holy books. One was about good works and the other two suggested honor in and even a desire for poverty-- one said that "beyond providing for body and soul, any more wealth is stealing". That might be part of the reason 40% of Indians are really damn poor.

Another reason is that India is a mostly socialist country. Government ministries of everything. The big souvenir shops, for a not extreme example, are all owned by the government. They're called "Cottage Industry Stores", and it stuns me that the governors haven't yet caught on to the connection between gov't control of distribution and the failure of the producers to grow beyond the cottage industry stage. Sure, the trinkets are charmingly native, but if a handmade brass plate the size of a basketball hoop is nine bucks in the tourist rip-off store, you know the authentic village craftsman got paid next to nothing-- employed full-time, he needs two months to pay back a hundred dollar loan.

Running water, steady electricity, and other public services stuff like that in Delhi, the capital, are available only to those who have the means to provide them for themselves privately; a recurrent selling theme in the ads for new apartments is a self-contained utility system. But there are signs of hope. During the introductions at the beginning of a seminar, the development guys participating-- a warm, sensitive, and caring lot from ten countries-- not quickly enough stifled involuntarily chuckles when one guy was introduced as a "scholar in marxist economics".

But back to language. English is supposed to be fairly commonly spoken, and it is, at least among the educated (and the irritatingly persistant hawkers), but it is not the English we know and love. Among the examples of our so-called common language: the Escort Finance Bank, Binha Pants Hospital, Applied Membrane Company bottled water, and, only 30 yards from the entrance to the Taj Mahal, the Central Jenha Institute of Leprosy.

Lastly, I spent most of my time in Haryana, where, in spring 2000, the eunuchs of India held their first political demonstration. Previously their role in society had been to entertain at weddings, according to a short wireservice article I saw just before I left, but lately they've become politically active. Well, there were elections in Haryana while I was there, elections to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, and the castrati didn't win, but that's not surprising. The article said that "there are said to be more than a million" of them in India, but India has one billion people-- that's 0.1% eunuchs. Politically not much, but in terms of mass numbers willing to mutilate themselves....

A little bitty limp when I walk,
a little squeaky voice when I talk.