We found Qarashen village mayor Garnik Shahnoubaryan sitting on the pavement outside his house. Even though it was only noon, we couldn’t convince him to open the doors of the mayor’s office. “The key’s in my car and my deputy’s driven somewhere,” he said. Before meeting up with the mayor, we tried to make out which of the three buildings lined up side by side housed the village head office. None of them have any outward sign of housing the local self-government office. There were no placards on the wall, not even an Armenian flag, which is required by law. The mayor pointed to his office but suggested that we go to his house and continue our conversation Mr. Shahnoubaryan didn’t think his job was all that important and answered our questions regarding the position by lazily waving his hand in the air and declaring, “There’s nothing there. Why should I go? There’s no money to anything…” He told us that the village’s projected 2009 budget was 7 million drams of which 4 million was supposed to come from local revenue sources and 3 million from state subsidies. Yearly, only 60-70% of local taxes are successfully collected. Land taxes are projected to be 2 million. The mayor told us that local residents hardly farm the local land since it is quite unproductive. There are plans to construct a water system for the village and the community must come up with 3.2 million drams as its contribution. The mayor said that with financing from the World Bank a company was selected to do the work through competitive bidding. He confessed that the community has only been able to save 1 million drams from tax revenues and that he is looking to make up the balance via benevolent contribution made by former Qarashen residents now living abroad. “There’s no money to do anything” – this was the constant refrain of the mayor. When we asked him what his first work project would be if there were funds, he said that the village would build a milk processing plant so that even a few residents would be gainfully employed. We should point out that such a plant used to operate nearby. The residents would sell their milk to the plant but they weren’t happy with the terms. The plant would buy the milk at cheap prices; 85 drams per liter. Residents we talked to in the village told us that the plant would grade their milk as having a low fat content. This way they could buy it on the cheap. They had no proof to back up their claims other than the fact that their milk was graded with a higher fat content in the Soviet period, when they added four liters of water to the milk’s tare weight container, than it is today, when they deliver pure milk. When we asked the mayor what the budget was being spent on, he answered that it hardly covered the salaries of his office staff. The Qarashen municipality has eight employees – mayor, mayor’s deputy, accountant, cashier, agriculturalist, cultural center director and janitor. The position of staff director is still vacant. No one has applied for the post during two open competitions. “What would the person do?” asked the mayor, adding that the 45,000-50,000 monthly wage has attracted none of the village’s unemployed. We didn’t conceal the fact that we thought that eight salaried positions for a municipality with nothing to do was a bit extreme. The mayor thought differently but added that in any event there soon would be job cuts due to a lack of funds. Only two or three positions would remain. “Pretty soon, no one will even seek the post of mayor,” Mr. Shahnoubaryan said confidently. The mayor was even more flabbergasted when he asked him about the activities of the municipality and the municipal council. “Who cares? What’s the point? Why should anyone want to become a council member?” he retorted. Qarashen, a village of 635 residents, has four council members. The fifth position on the council is vacant. No one wants the job. “There’s no land to allocate and no money in the budget to distribute,” said the mayor regarding the functions of the council. “We meet about once every two months regarding the water and flooding,” he said, claiming that the council’s decisions were posted in his office. “It’s a small village. People come and go. They read what’s posted.” “There’s nothing here. The village is down and out,” the mayor said to bolster his argument that any long-term project was a waste of time and effort. Despite his pessimism, people aren’t leaving Qarashen. The village doctor and nurse told us that there are 106 children in the village up till the age of eighteen and that there’s a rise in births. It would seem that the picture isn’t all that gloomy as the mayor depicts. Mayor Shahnoubaryan claimed that the same situation exists in the neighboring village. A closer look at the village of Tegh however points to glaring dissimilarities. There’s a new cultural center in Tegh boasting a well-maintained garden. There’s a cafe and hospital nearby as well. The two-story elementary school and kindergarten in Tegh is a far cry from what we saw in Qarashen. It was 3:30 pm, the middle of the work day, when we approached the municipal office in Tegh. Despite the fact that nobody was inside, the walls were covered with a variety of information notices including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a citizen’s social, property and other rights. All this was the result of one of the local NGO’s and imparted a sense that work was actually being carried out by the municipality. Doesn’t this go to prove that it is the absence of bureaucracy and having qualified staff in decision-making positions, rather than mere dollars and cents, that is at the root of some villages prospering and others stuck in a quagmire? Satenik Margaryan