Universities ranking

EDUCATION in general, higher education in particular is investment. Like any investment it is made for the future benefits. In Mongolia, around 116 thousand students and their parents made such investment in the academic year of 2008-2009 through a total of 154 tertiary educational institutions and colleges: 48 state-owned, 101 non government/ private-owned and 5 foreign branches. The return of this major investment is particularly interesting.

The most important indicator according to the related ministry shows that 1/3 of all graduates find employment immediately. No one investigates when the remaining 2/3 become employed because this fact is not interesting to anyone except for the investors.

The main reason why so many young graduates 60 percent women with “attractive and outstanding” diplomas, as praised by the issuing institutions, cannot find employment is because they do not meet employers’ /private sector/ basic requirements: they are not self confident and cannot pass minimal tests. For example, English major graduates cannot talk about themselves persuasively, let alone translate or write properly.

If a product that has been prepared for 5 years does not sell and is used for an entirely different purpose than its initial intention, a time comes for the producer to reconsider his/her business and to study the defective process from the customer’s point of view, or at least those of the big players.

Similarly in our educational system, from the teaching process or business operations angle there appears to be no or very little standard for the final product quality. Furthermore, there does not appear to be any power that monitors and enforces this operation neither inside the schools nor in the related public offices.

The higher education institutions in Mongolia do not create an upgrading capacity in order to meet the rising demand of businesses under the ever increasing speed of globalization and IT revolution. In an open and democratic society, anyone who produces goods competes with the best brands of the flat world we live in. It means every university in Mongolia is in competition with Harvard or Princeton. Drinking “Coca-cola” or “Monfresh” depends on the choice of the individual.

When it is time to specialize in a certain field, half of the students in Mongolian institutions usually choose disciplines in social sciences or humanities. Today, when the majority of the country’s economy consists of mining production and development, we could already have established one school recognized worldwide in training specialists in the field by this time.

We cannot change the quality of our education without learning the English language, in which all information and potential knowledge of every field is available. There is a pragmatic need for leading tertiary institutions to create a bilingual society, a special part of today’s social and economic development.

University education should be in close sync with businesses, their research activities relating to the demand. Students should have long term internships in industries. Businesses must organize their own trainings too. In South Korea, for example, companies above certain level of turnover are required to have their own training program by law.

From the standpoint of major participating sides of higher education, including the teachers themselves, educators’ labor is not well respected. Teachers do not have satisfactory revenue. Some entrepreneurial teachers publish their own textbooks, update them every year and sell them to students by pressure. But nowhere on any page of the school guide does the related authority recommend these textbooks.

The price for the value of higher education, the most important investment in life, is in general very low in Mongolia. One side pretends to pay while the other pretends to work. That’s why teachers’ attitude is irresponsible. In Mongolia teachers teach only occasionally, come late to class if they do and often use cell phone messaging to send page numbers for in class reading to waiting students, thus developing an own sort of “distance education”.

There is little chance in our schools for students to express themselves freely, to become engaged in debates for developing self confidence the use of correct language. In the western system teachers let students speak during class and teach them though guided practice. In Mongolia, we have the opposite. There are no equal two lanes of teaching and being taught. There is only one way of pushing. That is why we have such few graduates who speak confidently. For a student, homework is not a chance to complete his/her knowledge on a subject; it is a way of punishment, work to be done for teachers. This is a common problem of our schools.

In order to correct these problems and avoid them in the future we can develop a proper ranking system of higher education institutions. This will increase competition among universities and further increase the quality of their product. Ranking of schools quality, capacity and potential through commonly accepted standards has become today’s social demand.

Every year in the USA, “US News & World Report” magazine publishes lists of schools ranked in categories. Schools and accredited independent audiences provide statistics. These rankings are indexes of reputation for schools.

Independent third party, the media bases its annual ranking of schools on peer institutions and administration evaluations of academic resources, retention of students, alumni donations (exempt of income tax), ratio of graduates to enrolled students and so on. Rankings are also based on the number of students employed immediately or in three to six months. In some cases of business graduate degree schools, they use the average salary level after graduation and other relevant variables.

Such ranking of higher education is important in decision making of the investors for a better return on investments. In addition, ranking is important for non discrimination of higher educational institutions in Mongolia through their property types (private/public).

Conflict of interests

Dear my country fellows, it is time to make a change that could boost efficiency of public governance, restore the respect towards the state, and increase the living standard of the citizens without much a cost.

This is to remove the conflict of interests that crawls like fungus on the walls of our governance, spreads throughout the society and rots our normal daily life.
Conflict of interest, at the present, is leading the state governance to bankruptcy, throwing off balance its normal operations, and making the governance almost dysfunctional.

The Mongolian society has not paid proper attention to this growing problem from the beginning and has not eliminated it on time. The Mongolian state itself has not held responsible any of the perpetrators, and this threat has dug deeper into the roots of the society.

Conflict of interests is a disagreement between personal and public benefits where the state and local administration officers abuse their public positions for their personal profit, both material and non material.

The major reason why there are relatively fewer occurrences of conflicting interests in other democratic societies is that they can take preventive measures before such instances occur. If it does occur, it is cut off immediately and the society is getting better immunized. That is why it never reaches there the level of crisis like in Mongolia.

Recently the German Health Minister took the official car to a beach in Spain for her own leisure and caused a huge media buzz. On the next round of parliamentary election two months later, German voters did not support her and her Social Democratic Party as a punishment for vacationing with the tax payers money. Thus otherwise the leading political party had lost the election.

When such a rich country resigns its minister for such a small stuff, how about our nation? What nonsense is the use of a government car for private pleasure! What about those public officials who make the whole ministry, agency and industry a part of his own business. It is a common phenomenon in Mongolian governance to see a minister, his deputy or other high ranking officials, who own businesses in the same sector, finance the election campaign of their party and run their own political election campaign at the cost of public and recover their cost several times after getting elected then nominated into position aimed. This has become a norm of Mongolian governance. The citizens are accustomed to that, and it looks like the foreign partners accepted it too.

A head of investment department of each ministry must always be replaced if the minister is changed. This position responsible for ministry’s investment package is higher than any political seat in that administration. This person invests public money through so called “tender.” If we consider that one third of everything Mongolians have produced in a year is redistributed through the public procurement, that investment department becomes a large shopping counter. But this is only one of thousands of counters in a “department store” of state and local governments.

The government is the largest employer in the country as the public servants became fifteen percent of the labor force. The dream job of many young people is a tax or a customs inspector, judge and police, or a political party’s, its affiliated organizations’ leader. Working for the government means having a chance to study abroad, getting an apartment or, if lucky, becoming a servant for the next government-born billionaire. These facts indicate that sad fact that the Mongolian society accepts and respects conflict of interests.

The basic condition for removing and preventing the conflict of interests is to make the government transparent and keep it that way. True information must reach the society on time in a country with a transparent government. That is the main role of the media. Only the citizens with true and complete information can join their voices and demand with power for transparency.

The political driver that presses for complete and true information is the opposition power. Since we have lost that opposition power, the true information of government reality has disappeared. Media is dependent on owners, who are in a coalition set up to cover the conflict of interests. Only complete and full information makes the government transparent and only a transparent government takes responsibility.

In order to remove conflict of interests, mature democratic societies aspire to prevent it by all means, openly disclose an existing conflict, do not allow the related officials to participate in the decision of those issues, make evaluation through a third party and enforce the code of ethics. Depending on the circumstance, they take few or all of these measures.

In order to prevent the conditions for conflict of interests, public officers sell their companies or the shares related to him/her. Working for the government means serving the people. In English they say, “to be a public servant.” In Mongolia they pretend to remove their company/share ownership by transferring the title to a family member.
If public officers believe there is a conflict of interests in their position, they disclose the information at the first opportunity, through the media. This has never happened in the history of Mongolia.

If any decision in the industry is related to his/her own company, that public officer does not participate in the decision making process. It is simply not allowed. If this happens in Mongolia, the government officers will just have fewer working hours.

If there is a conflict of interest, a third party is invited to make an evaluation. It is hard to find a third party in Mongolia. In one or another way, one of the two parties merges into the third party anyway. Mongolian judiciary system is exemplary of this fusion.

The enforcement of code of ethics is the most effective tool in a society because reputation becomes most important. In Mongolia, they organize a month or a year of code of ethics campaign, which results in nothing, as usual. Yet honor must be the most important character of any statesman. Remember a Korean leader who was accused of bribery in exchange of making profit for a private company? As soon as inspections started, he committed suicide. Here code of honor works.

Mongolian society needs to create a culture of non tolerance for conflict of interests. The government itself must take responsibility over those public officers who realize such conflict of interests. Only then we can remove this terrible fungus and increase social immunity. Is it that difficult a task?

City Air

After three days of staying in UB City, my European colleague told me bluntly: “Your city’s air is seriously polluted. You almost do not have any trees.

There is too much traffic jam. I have a headache and a sore throat.” Instead of staying for the weekend as planned, she left the country earlier to stay in Beijing, “where the air is better’.

What if she came to Ulaanbaatar in the winter and not at the beginning of September? A visitor will go back; but what about us, who stay here all year round?
As the cold winter comes, we are about to sink again into the thick polluted smog. We will shout and then our city officials will choir with the same old refrain: we are supplying 20 to 30 million dollars worth of smokeless bricketes and chimneyless stoves. But the real holders of this sum escape the winter to tropical beaches overseas. Left behind, we are poisoned, with some even dead, shout then forget as spring comes, and celebrate Naadam in summer just like in the fairy tale of “The Ant and The Grasshopper.”

Actually, we know very well the reasons of air pollution. The prime reason is that two hundred thousand chimneys of more than a half of the city population’s dwellings produce smoke from not fully burned coal, tires and bricks absorbed in used oil. The next reason is two hundred thousand vehicles with “UB” license plates, half of which are banned from use in Korea and China. The last reason is a destructing and plundering governance that pretends to plan and implement.

The main tool for removing these causes in a democratic society is a government itself that represents citizens. The duty of the government is to provide normal conditions for population’s safe life. Everyone knows that the basic condition of life is oxygen. For the city with over one million inhabitants, the normal condition of air is supported by green development that includes parks, flower beds, tree alleys, bushes but not weeds. In order to create healthy air required for human activities green developments absorb carbon dioxide from the air pool and produce oxygen through photosynthesis; and humidify the air, decrease noise, protect from wind and clean the air bacteria. Needless to say that green developments bring joy to the eye and help relieve the stress.

Yet, Mongolian government, in particular Ulaanbaatar city office, is the biggest enemy of this green development. Following are only three cases to prove it.
Construction of two large hotels on both sides of our only park, that we have cultivated for many years and called “The Children’s Park,” is in a full swing behind a tall closed fence, destroying hundreds of trees. There is a wonderful park in the center of New York City where people jog in the morning and picnic in the afternoon. They can preserve the park and we cannot here. Needless to mention London and Paris, lucky them! The difference between us is that they can unite their voices while we cannot. No one is interested in what air people breathe in or whether the children of future generations will be disabled as long as a few city officials and couple of companies get rich. For Mongolian bureaucrats, the illness or death of citizens is only statistics.

While normal countries move power plants out of the city to remote areas, in Mongolia it is on the contrary: they have decided to construct the fifth coal bedded power source in Uliyastai of Bayanzurkh District. They say it is cheaper to transport coal from Baganuur Mines to Bayanzurkh District. Air pollution is not their concern because almost each of them has secured one valley around UB, where smoke does not come and the air is fresh.

They have decided to erect a new parliament palace replacing the garden north of the current Government House. Each esteemed member of the parliament would have a working and a resting rooms, assistant office and meeting lounge. The 18 storey tower would have a gym, swimming pool, sauna, restaurant, barber shop and even a television repair shop taking a total space of 33 thousand square meters. The government cost of a democratic country should be proportional to the capacity of its economy and level of citizens’ living standard. As Mongolians say, “whistle according to the size of your herd of horses.” When the form does not reflect the content, it becomes funny. So, how about moving the parliament to its proper location as it cannot make its government, the main party at fault, to solve the air pollution problem. It will be much cheaper than 20 million dollars, which is planned for the new construction, to move the 76 clowns to the Blue Circus. Give us fresh air to breathe! Clean the polluted air! Or get us a gas-mask! One and a half million gas masks are nothing compared to billions of togrogs wasted.
Dear guests of Ulaanbaatar City, if you have a strong reason to visit us in the winter, please make sure to bring with you a gas-mask.

City roads

City like a human is a living system. Just as vessels carry life sustaining blood throughout the human body, so must city roads freely transport humans and goods. If the artery gets blocked at any point, the city life, like the heart, loses its rhythm failing to function normally.

If humans and goods could drift with order and without interruption the inhabitants would be less stressed, calmer and friendlier towards each other and the city’s productivity per hour would increase accordingly. The minimum requirement for a normal traffic condition in a city is readable street signs and clear traffic rules.
Every city that has a normal life constantly works at creating this free flow and therefore has mutually supporting streets and avenues where traffic of pedestrians and vehicles are consistently in sync.

There are plans of cities that have remarkably coordinated the daily traffic of millions of people. While Paris and Washington’s are similar with the roads, radiate from rings spread around the city, almost all other American cities follow a grid system. Horizontal roads are called streets and vertical roads are called avenues. It is a simple logic that the magisterial of heating, drinking and sewage waters run underneath these streets along with the auxiliary lines. All horizontal highways are even numbered while the vertical ones are odd numbered. This whole plan is a big contribution to making the business of the city residents more productive and competitive.
Yet, how does our Ulaanbaatar city look? Saying the truth of the matter feels like poring salt on the wound. City residents’ patience is running out. Our transportation does not move forward even though it has a wheel and if it does, it jumps like a grasshopper. Reaching any destination in Ulaanbaatar city is like participating in an off road rally. After a certain time of joggling and shaking, we jump out of our car as if electrocuted with disheveled hair and half a mind. Feeling lucky that another car skimming by has not run us over, we head toward our intended direction.

Ulaanbaatar’s residents will never be able to live properly without finding out and removing the reasons behind this situation. Absence of a city plan, disastrous scales of land corruption and irresponsibility of the governing authorities are especially prominent reasons among many.
There is no planning of Ulaanbaatar city. There are only some top officials who say that there is, by looking at some false, dummy drawings on their office walls. There is no one who knows where the major roads go, when we need to check the conditions and allow maintenance. These exterminators wake up only when the road cannot be used any more, and the bridge has cracked. Their first measure is to block the road and stop all traffic and to show the mighty power of the state. They have been asking for money abroad to construct a road connecting Asia and Europe across Mongolia. Yet, in order to repair the only bridge, BayanZurkh, on this road in Ulaanbaatar city, they have diverted the traffic off road across the skirts of the Bogd Mountain. They have not prepared accordingly. The resulting traffic makes such a huge cloud of dust that it is impossible to see the front of the car. Soon this dust cloud combined with the traditional winter smog curtains will make it hard to find the city, let alone our homes.
Land corruption has really overindulged. Children’s playgrounds, city parks and other public spaces including so called protected areas have been all basically “sold out.” Now our officials have moved on to giving out the city roads. Out of thousands of cases, the road west of the Central Post Office which used to connect the Stock Exchange side road with the main avenue has now become a construction site, blocking the traffic like in “Zelter’s Trap,” from a popular Mongolian movie “Ugluu.”
In spite of many years’ strong protests of citizens against the situations described above, none of the city top executives is held responsible for these corrupt actions. As we say “goat horns never reach the sky.” Instead they keep climbing to higher positions as if worst performance gets highest award. Because the mayor of the city is not elected by Ulaanbaatar’s residents, instead nominated by a political party, he and his employees’ main purpose is to bring revenue and make donations to their own party, not necessarily to serve the citizens.
Dear Mayor,

We, the citizens of this city would like to walk and drive peacefully on our roads at anytime we need and reach our homes alive in one piece. We know and understand well that Ulaanbaatar will not be like Paris overnight. But please do perform, at least sometimes, like a real Mayor of a city should.

Property rights

In his famous book “Mystery of Capital,” Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto explained that the key difference between a developing and developed nations lies in its ability or inability to create capital with property.

A certificate of property rights or entitlement is a necessary basic factor for creating a capital from a property. A title represents a property and circulates like money because this piece of paper confirms a property’s value and its current owner, whose rights are certified and guaranteed by the government. Any financial and banking institution recognizes the certificate exactly as the property itself and gives loans and even raises money solely based on the title. As a result, circulation of properties increases and the nation’s amount of accumulated capital grows exponentially. While the property remains on its location without movement, its representation can wander anywhere in the world and makes money while the owner sleeps.

Depending on the character, property divides into three types: intellectual, material and land. Unfortunately, classic understanding regarding owner’s rights of an intellectual property is almost nonexistent in Mongolia and this subject will be discussed separately. This time, let’s look more closely at problems regarding material and land property.
Mongolian government‘s current operations intentionally create barriers and obstacles, instead of opportunities for building capital from properties. It is pitiful that because government authorized organizations reciprocally negate each other, two ministries of the same government have to sign an agreement to coordinate their business. Let’s look at concrete examples of the capital city.

In Ulaanbaatar, boundary distinctions between a private and a public land property do not exist. As a result, it is up to some political party official, who may separate or unite the building owner’s rights from the land owner’s rights, to give or not give a property title and rights to one or the other individual. Where authorities change in the party’s name in however way the property rights and title owners, a group of few people have become accustomed to plunder a long time ago.
The capital city’s many buildings are constructed and keep being constructed by the dozen on public land including children’s playground space, pedestrian roads and flood dams. As a result, another public authority refuses to give permission for operation of those properties. In addition, once the construction has started, citizens who believe in public governance prepay to reserve a residence in the new building. When the construction is complete, they move in but cannot get title on their property.
At the moment, a whole district with a large shopping center and an apartment complex for thousands of families that is constructed on the source of drinking water for the city, is awaiting its sales on the market. Its future residents will clearly not be able to receive their title on their properties.
Furthermore, residents of apartment buildings which were constructed and sold under the so called “tourism development purpose” in Zaisan valley of Bogd Mountain’s supposedly national protected area, have still not received their titles of property although they have been living there for already a few years.
Political election is the only hope for residents in any similar situation dispersed throughout the city. If any incumbent boss with a strong political power campaigns for parliament election, as an accepted standard, s/he makes sure that their political party gets those titles signed by related authorities. “In general you cannot, but if you prove that you really want, than it is possible,” is the principle of Mongolian public governance.
Because citizens cannot get titles on those properties they paid for with their lifelong savings, so much property is blocked and cannot circulate in the economy to get a “life” of its own.

Since there is no title on properties, there is less chance to get a proper market assessment; the owners cannot exercise their property rights and even receive insurance services. Since they cannot insure against fire and flood, the costs of risk management soar. Just recently during the flood, basements of Zaisan valley’s newly constructed residential houses overflowed with water and permanently damaged many expensive cars. Residents of the new apartments with leaking roofs, walls grown with fungus, and no heating system also share the same luck. Because there is no legal basis to make assessment and it is not clear who owns the property, the government is not able to collect property taxes up to 2 per cent of its market evaluation. When there is no such tax on that property, its maintenance and related services are barely done with the money collected from residents and not by the city administration.
Because the government does not guarantee the citizens’ creation of capital with their own properties, the people are poor and the government continues to ask for assistance from foreign countries every year trying to meet ends.
The main gateway to development is by making sure that every property has a title and an owner who is responsible for that title.

The Swedish Model and Mongolia

Sweden is an exemplary model of social and economic development. Within a hundred years since 1868, when Londoners collected money for its starving children, Sweden surpassed the wealthiest country, USA, becoming a dreamland for many. The country, where one out of ten citizens is an immigrant, has a population four times larger than Mongolia’s and a land four times smaller.
A few days ago, three hundred participants from thirty three countries gathered in Stockholm for the annual meeting of Mont Pelerin Society, World’s Libertarian Economists’ Organization. At the conference themed “The Market Economy in the Welfare State,” scientists and economists held interesting discussions about the host country’s economic model. Among the participants were Nobel Prize economist Jim Buchanan, Yale University professor Richard Epstein, well known for his unique position on market and taxes; authors Mark Skousen and David Boaz, well known to Mongolian readers for their “Making of Modern Economics” and “Libertarianism: a Primer,” respectively. The mayor of Stockholm, Sten Nordin, hosted a gala dinner for the delegates in the “Golden Room” of the City Hall, where the Nobel banquet takes place on December 10 every year.
“We Swedes have three different development models,” said the famous economist Assar Lindbeck. Those are the leap in development period from 1870-1970, the period of slow growth from 1970-1990 and the reformation period from 1990 on. The first part founded Sweden’s basis for economic wonder and luxurious living standard. The middle is an unsuccessful attempt of socialism. The last phase is correcting the mistakes of the middle part.
During the first fast growing hundred years, the economy was not centralized and the government was small. It implemented a policy to create the rules of the game required for capitalist market and to keep those rules stable and transparent. The government played its “classical” role by creating public goods and services, building up functional reliable infrastructure, and supporting investment in human resources by introducing compulsory primary school system and by establishing engineering schools at all levels of education around the country.
They passed laws to support private entrepreneurship, liberalized the foreign trade and lowered the level of income and profit taxes. Soon with the increase of productivity, Sweden became the fastest, intensively developed economy of the world. As a result of the open policy, every Swede spoke fluent German by the end of century, and fluent English by the middle of the 20th century.
While almost a quarter of the population has migrated to the USA, a fifth of them came back to Sweden and started his/her own private business based on acquired knowledge and skills and started to produce goods and services for the international market.
Education and knowledge of foreign languages combined with their natural hard working culture has made Swedes contribute to humankind many well known brands and famous innovations: Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite, an easier and safer material to handle than gun powder, VOLVO cars and trucks, SAAB cars and planes, Eriksson mobile phones, IKEA furniture, H&M retail chain, ABBA pop group, to name only a few. Another distinct feature relevant to mention is their creation of a strong army of relatively well paid, competent, almost incorruptible and reputable public officers.
Since the late 60’s, the socialists with their promises of a paradise have increased taxes and have attempted to create a land of welfare nation with tax payers money (the second model). Slowly the country kept losing its competitiveness while the economy came to stagnation. After the 90s, the country has been trying to correct these policies by reforming the ill public sector (the third model).
Mongolian current economic and social situation closely resembles Sweden of the last century’s early period. One would assume that we better pursue the open economic policy consistently and encourage every business to orient for the global market. One would further assume that it is better to encourage investment in development of human resources capacity and make particular sectors competitive in the North-East Asian region. In short, the most relevant model for Mongolia seems to be the first one that boosted Sweden’s economic growth.
Instead, our government is following the second model which served almost as an obstacle in the prosperity of Sweden. One would once more assume, that if a country like Sweden could not create a “welfare nation” on a solid basis of the hundred year old economy, Mongolia would definitely not be able to do it, with the lack of a functional infrastructure and without a single of our companies having entered into the world market with original products and services other than mineral commodities. We cannot become a “dreamland,” even if we sold all our abundant minerals, when we have a wrong model of development.
However, there are a number of smart initiatives taking place in Sweden such as the creation of private pension funds; school voucher systems where the education of a child from a low income family at a private school is paid from public fund; connection of university labs with private companies and industries; and very well functioning internship programs that increase productivity and equality. These are only few ideas to consider and adapt to Mongolia’s development.
Stockholm-Ulaanbaatar

Key to Urbanization

Written by Jargalsaikhan.D
UB Post
Friday, August 21, 2009.

Any city or settled area develops from a power that supports the energy of residents who aspire to live a better life, and not from a power that limits and diminishes their internal will. Despite all hopes, in Mongolia, the communist method of attempting to solve community problems without the community itself is getting stronger instead of outdated. In last year’s election of capital city’s legislative body, all representatives actively competed with each other promising the nation to perform all sorts of miracles if only they get elected. More than a year has passed since this extravagant overture and people are still waiting for the action.
City and district management is still under the trap of negotiations set up by political parties. Top management positions at these levels are given out as reward for political engagement. As a result of a so called coalition, the number of deputy seats keeps increasing and the decision making process keeps slowing down while operation costs keep inflating.
If a supporting company of one party takes over one public property, then a supporter of the other party is entitled to take over another property. Both sides, together or one by one, go for state owned company’s chief executive seat or property to milk money and share it with a related political party. Take a glance, for example, at the way how all state or city owned companies were run for the last 19 years. As a result, there is no single problem for which the city of Ulaanbaatar is responsible.
Small rain floods the city because the dams have disappeared. People live in dark streets full of waste, without drinking water but at least with expired food and get poisoned with heavily polluted air. In short, we are getting less and less secured. Ulaanbaatar is not getting urbanized, but “ruralized,” read “medievalized,” and reminds one of the shaky dining ger standing at the major off-road connections.
City rulers of all times never formulated, let alone strictly followed, a workable, long term development plan and policy. They pretended to manage while the citizens were pretending to be managed. From election to election we replace some of them, but it is like replacing one feudal with another one. No progress.
Yet, a housing project that replaces ger districts could be a major driving force to enforce urbanization. The construction of housing for 170,000 families would be a historic jump in economic, social and cultural developments in Mongolia. This initiative of exchanging land for apartments for every ger district resident was proposed by the Mongolian Civic Union to Ulaanbaatar citizens and city officials. Nothing is done in this regard except for the fact that the former mayor successfully used the motto “Exchange Your Land for a 3-room Apartment” as a slogan for his campaign and got elected in the Parliament last year. It is not clear how many of his voters got their land replaced with 3-rooms.
The residents in ger districts could create cooperatives and make a plan for construction of houses, schools and other common services in cooperation with the city and district officials.
This cooperative could become a public company where those residents and other participants owning shares would not only get his current land replaced with apartments with certain number of rooms, at a certain location by the preliminary rules, but also share profits from the sale of remaining apartments. In this project, many will have not only an apartment but also a job.
This initiative could get a wide range of support from architects, engineers and other professionals. Since all participants have a share in the public construction companies, the cost will be minimized may be to the third per square meter. Thus estimated bribe level for land title and construction related permissions will also be reduced.
The most efficient method in dealing with huge differences in price between land owners and the city is to invite owners to become shareholders of the project.
The rest is a question of technicalities. The decision making power of citizens to improve their living condition should be in their hand. The city officials should support that power instead of limiting it.

Mongolians for fair taxes, wise spending. www.taxpayers.mn