Juku-Kalle Raid: "Non-living primary product", bureaucratic absurdity against rural life

Columnist Juku-Kalle Raid takes aim with biting irony at the absurdities of Estonian bureaucracy, from the incomprehensible term "non-living primary product" to demands by the Road Administration that roadside strawberry sellers coordinate their sign design with officials. Raid argues that state administration has grown too large and is directly damaging rural communities and small business.

Well-known opinion leader Juku-Kalle Raid in Estonian public life is exhausted, and he makes no secret of it. His latest column turns a spotlight on some of the most curious examples of Estonian official bureaucracy, raising the question: does anyone there actually think?

"Non-living primary product", what on earth is that?

The term "non-living primary product" takes the hardest hit. Raid suggests repeating this phrase to oneself quietly one hundred times in a row, guaranteeing an effect stronger than a hundred grams of cannabis. But what lies behind this convoluted official term pair? Simply cucumber. Strawberry. Mushroom. Carrot. Ordinary garden-grown things that have been renamed in a way that makes them unrecognizable to any ordinary person.

Raid asks justifiably: do officials use such language deliberately to cover their tracks and create confusion? Or is it simply that "sleep of reason produces monsters", as the classical work of art says?

Strawberry seller caught in the web of approvals

The second example concerns the Road Administration. There it has been deemed necessary to demand that a small farmer advertising roadside cucumber sales or strawberries must coordinate his sign design and dimensions with officials before putting it up. Raid notes poetically that by the time official approval arrives, the strawberries have long since rotted. And yet the state talks about supporting rural life and small business.

Social Democrats' office like a Soviet collective farm office

The third example comes from the Social Democrats: according to the columnist, ideas have been considered according to which a farmer growing cucumber on a hectare of land could turn out to be a "major producer", and therefore already suspiciously capitalist and subject to strict supervision. Raid doesn't mince words: "Constant surveillance is sick."

The columnist ends with a simple and clear recommendation: officials who generate such ideas could get by for three months without fresh vegetables. Perhaps then they would understand what "non-living primary product" means in real life.