Putin wants ineffective experts locked in submarine

Vladimir Putin file photo

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Evgeniya Chaykovskaya – November 22, 2012)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with a development roadmap created by experts from the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), particularly on improving effectiveness of customs supervision, RIA Novosti reported.

“The practice of implementing roadmaps shows that not everything is going as smoothly as we would like,” Putin said.

He noted that some departments only formally conformed to the orders: “The papers were signed, meetings were held and businessmen see that very little is changing in practice.”

Submarine for the experts

At a meeting of ASI’s council, the head of “young professionals” department Dmitry Peskov said the organization came up with a new technology known as “Sharashka 2.0”, RIA Novosti reported.

“We had a case like this: 90 years ago, you must remember, a philosophical ship took 225 leading philosophers together with Ivan Ilyin away. In August this year we put 225 people on Forsyth-ship, and they worked on the roadmaps for the agency. Those were experts from the government, business and young students. We called this technology Sharashka 2.0. So [we are there] for six days, 24 hours a day, with comfortable conditions, but there is nowhere to run,” Peskov said.

Putin noted that sharashka is not a very good name. “Do you know what sharashka stands for? During Stalin’s times, scientists were forced into obligatory labor,” he said.

Peskov explained that the name appeared because the experts are on a ship with nowhere to go from it.

“I see ­ you might have chosen a submarine… There is definitely nowhere to run from there,” Putin said.

“We’d love that. It would be nice,” Peskov replied.

The institute started working on roadmaps to solve pressing issues for conducting business in Russia, like customs administration, construction regulation, connecting to electricity networks and supporting export.

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