#5
Commentary Says Russians Unlikely To Accept Claims of Better Living
Conditions
By Itar-Tass writers Veronika Voskoboinikova, Mikhail Kalmykov

MOSCOW, December 30 (Itar-Tass) - The Russians have learnt on the New Year eve from President Vladimir Putin that they "have begun to live better at least a bit".

The president sees that as a "main result" of the outgoing year.

Putin has a reputation for reserved assessments. As usual he has withheld rosy promises and relations of successes.

Russia's provinces are unlikely to embrace straight out the news of their living a better life, though.

Many Russians are having a hard time, although they are still ready to show their legendary patience and "if only there is no war" philosophy. Polls suggest that security worries them more than the housing and utility reform and the prospect of rocketing costs it brings.

But it is important that federal and regional authorities do not abuse the Russian patience and do not shelve solutions to social problems.

The president is obviously aware that the number of hospitals and schools he visited does not measure social results of the outgoing year.

Nor do numbers of his decrees on financial assistance to problem-ridden regions he issued and of meetings on pensions and wages he chaired depict the social situation, and this is often the agenda of his traditional meetings with members of the government on Mondays.

All the more so that numerous social problems persist and many areas of social programmes have no renewed social basis, in particular medicine.

Putin was categorical: "The task of preparing the legislative base for transition to insurance medicine has not been fulfilled."

He announced the development in 2003 of a law on mandatory medical insurance.

The budget projects a 24 per cent increase in spending on the health sector. However, the higher appropriations for health care in the absence of its new principles only new leaves in place what outdated and ineffective there is to the old system.

This also holds for spheres like education and culture. The most conspicuous action of Putin in these fields has been periodical increases in stipends and appropriations from the presidential fund for renovation of educational centres and promotion of presidential educational programmes and cultural endeavours.

It should be acknowledged, however, that Russians so far have a vague notion of what education and how their children will get amid the present-day crazequilt of school programmes and institute enrollment requirements.

Putin announced at the end of the year that the government will send to the State Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house, amendments to the education law that would shift responsibility for pay to teachers from a municipal level to a regional one. Whether stability of the teachers' salaries will benefit from this is open to question, however.

The logic of socio-economic development is delaying solutions to social issues until better economic times.

In last analysis, the whole range of economic challenges comes down just to health care, education, wages, pensions and housing. Any babushka will say how much bread and milk her pension buys and what a new apartment bill will do to her savings.

But few can weigh the advertised 4 per cent economic growth or boons of Russia's record-high grain exports of this year.

The problems lies in that laws with an immediate bearing on the social sphere will begin to work not tomorrow and not even in a year, and the president is using his rating and trust margin to help Russians tide over a "waiting period" until these "long-term" laws really get in motion.

Putin appears to sacrifice his rating just in the social area, for whose else advice "to wait for results of the introduction of new mechanisms in the pension system" but the president's 38 millions of Russia's pensioners are ready to tolerate, with the pension reform for a year in progress without any improvement in sight.

Some politicians have called for dropping tough social solutions. Putin somewhere slows them down, apparently not with populists designs but because shock therapy is not in his arsenal of methods.

And then patience of the population cannot be tested further by demanding new and new sacrifices.

The past year has shown that the president chooses between everyday concerns of citizens and rigorous imperatives of macroeconomic reforms in favour of the former.

This was the case with the reforms of the housing and utility sector and the electric energy industry, when Putin curbed government's zeal: "The implementation of plans must be accurate and weighed."

Temptation to hasten reforms on the crest of some economic improvement is great, but Putin makes it clear that reforms threatening to hit living standards must not be rushed along.

Sensitivity of broad layers of the population to these spheres is so great that power has to act on the Hippocratic principle of the medical profession -- "do not harm".

However, all possibilities must be recruited to make the life of the Russians better every year.

Putin believes this has been done last year.

BACK TO THE TOP    #238 CONTENTS    NEXT ARTICLE