The long goodbye

The last of the great peasant classes in Europe is about to go out of business and it seems they should not be surprised. The fault of the masses who are going to be hustled off their postage stamp plots with the minimum of good grace apparently lies in their inability to qualify for safety nets, if we are to take the word of Aleksander Bentkowski, president of the state's farming restructuring agency, at its face value. He argues in a discussion with WBJ this week (see page 8) that for at least 50% of the peasantry, even the chance to scrape a living was doomed. It is clear they are sunk in a morass of very largely empty promises.
One imagines a son of rural toil raising his eyes from Rzeczpospolita after a hard say's labor and turning to his wife: "Well at least it's clear at last, my dear. They are sending someone to restructure us. Better put the kettle on."
But there is nothing amusing in the cynical detachment of all Polish administrations from 1989 onward from the throbbing problem of agriculture. Over a quarter of the population are locked in a bitter embrace with the land, the Polish equivalent of Italy's Mezzogiorno. They are now to be sacrificed, more or less without serious compensation. Urban Poles will lose little sleep, the mandarins in Brussels, even less.
Rural Poland has been more or less bypassed by market reforms, is desperately poor and getting poorer. To no small extent this is due to the atrocious state of transport infrastructure, an invisible motorway net and the wretched rail system. Now comes the blow of what market analysts might coldly describe as agricultural de-stocking. And as for the anticipated 50% reduction in smallholding dependency, the far more likely figure is 80%.

So as Lenin famously asked, what is to be done?
It is what should have been done a long time ago. A securely funded program to decently buy out small plotholders and a system of grants to encourage land mergers and larger and more efficient farms. And with what resources? Those which have been consistently misdirected into propping up woefully inefficient state controlled industries these past 12 years. The Polish countryside is on the edge of catastrophe. Who cares?
Time to check out, Kołodko
Finance Minister Grzegorz Kołodko is astounding. Just days after jettisoning the government's self-imposed inflation plus 1% spending cap in next year's budget, the goofy ex-professor used a loaf of bread and a pair of scissors to illustrate the extent of Poland's financial problems to economists and journalists last week. He then stormed off refusing to take any questions. The audience was not amused.
Kołodko needs to resign or be sacked before he makes a further mockery of his office, the government and Poland's 38 million citizens, who have a right not be patronized.
As for his 2003 budget, Kołodko should pay attention to what journalists and economists have to say about the global economic outlook. Earnings hopes are too optimistic, despite the worldwide slide in share prices. By dumping the government's spending cap, Kołodko risks putting Poland on the brink of financial disaster.
For more on Kołodko and his Trappist vows of detachment from public scrutiny, see "Reporter's Notebook" on the opposite page.