Mirjam Mõttus: Suggesting everyone move to the capital has gone too far in Estonia
The desire of people living in the periphery to exist outside of cities is more than Estonia can handle. Perhaps we should look to Mongolia, then, where the parliament has decided to make suburban plots of land available to steppe nomads if they agree to move their tents to the capital, Mirjam Mõttus ponders in Vikerraadio's daily commentary.
For various reasons, the Ministry of Education and Research is currently revising Estonia's network of schools. Among other changes, the ministry wants to quickly reorganize the Vana-Vigala Technical and Service School. The reason given is that the school has for years failed to manage on its budget and that the government cannot keep paying for this failure indefinitely.
While the school is important for several education-related reasons, the 300 residents of the village of Vana-Vigala depend on it in many other ways. Its kitchen also provides for the local basic school, the latter's students use its dormitory, the vocational school provides most of the area's jobs and the basic school and nearby residential buildings depend on the technical school's boiler plant. Therefore, the Vana-Vigala Technical and Service School seems to be the beating heart of the entire settlement and should it stop, the broader area's circulation would be cut off as well.
At least that is what the locals claim, for whom the ministry's plans are a source of constant anxiety. The local mood is summed up in a comment from a social media group: "Life in the country is expensive, and the closing of rural area schools will channel a lot of country folks to major cities or their hinterlands. It will be much easier and cheaper to herd and maintain them there." Plans to close schools are, therefore, seen as part of a campaign to destroy life in the countryside.
Similar emotions are tangible in the small city of Põlva, 240 kilometers from Vana-Vigala. Over there, the government is busy moving out of the area. This year alone, several agencies have packed up in the city, but also a bank branch. It is clear that Põlva will not get a new state service center. That said, statistics are merciless, and maintaining service offices for a few daily visits is not sustainable.
Minister of Regional Affairs Piret Hartman (SDE) has proposed having tax or social insurance agents visit people to help them with their affairs in remote regions instead.
But what to do about the people of Vana-Vigala should the vocational school be closed in a few years? Local problems will become locals' problems, and even if someone should dare look to the government for a solution, they'll be told what people are always told in such situations; that we cannot keep paying for your life in the periphery, investments need to prioritize the number of beneficiaries, it would be more sensible for you to live in the city and if it's so hard, why are you still there?
Make of it what you will, but calls for everyone to live in the capital have been taken a bit too far in Estonia. There is less talk of where people would live or how to ensure the necessary level of public services, which are in short supply as it is. Besides, until recently at least, the policy has been for life to be possible all over Estonia.
Let us take a look at Mongolia, the surface area of which is greater than those of France, Germany and Spain put together, meaning that its 3.4 million inhabitants make it the most sparsely inhabited country on the planet. The "everyone to the capital" movement has been switched to overdrive there. Even now, 45 percent of the people of Mongolia live in the capital Ulaanbaatar, and that trend is only growing stronger. In Estonia, around 35 percent of people live in Tallinn.
Estonia's problem is having too few people, especially a few in peripheral areas. Everyone has had a hand in making it so. Local people have blocked developments that would have brought jobs and new life to the area, while the government has failed to keep its word, if only when it comes to developing decent transport links.
In Mongolia, the trouble is cold weather. This is exacerbated by climate change, meaning it is increasingly difficult to store enough food for animals to survive the winter. Nomads' herds simply can't survive harsh winters, with the animals dying of hunger and cold. For example the winter of 2009/2010 cost Mongolian nomad herdsmen 50-60 percent of their animals. All of it affects local people, just like having few people and fewer services in the periphery affects Estonia.
Pushed by the winds of change and necessity, nomads are leaving their steppes for the capital Ulaanbaatar's yurt campus to erect their gers in a walled-off area there. Namely, the Mongolian parliament decided in 2008 that everyone who moves their ger to the city, gets a 700 square meter plot of land. And hey presto – 60 percent of Ulaanbaatar residents now inhabit said campus.
Drinking water, sewage, roads and other amenities are problematic, to say the least. There is also little work and less income. Poverty is rampant, as is alcoholism and everything else that comes with it. People are longing for their steppes and true identity, and while there are plans to build blocks of flats for the residents of the yurt campus, the Mongols, accustomed to their gers, aren't thrilled about the prospect.
Perhaps we should emulate the Mongolian system and give the increasingly expensive periphery residents a plot of land in a field next to the capital where they'll be easier and cheaper to herd and keep alive.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski