“This publication reports on 18 months of research, debate, and deliberation by the Task Force on Higher Education and Society, convened by the World Bank and UNESCO, to bring together experts from 13 countries to explore the future of higher education in developing nations.”
In 1999 I began work on the communications strategy as well as editing the expert contributions for the Task Force on Higher Education and Society’s report, Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise (2000). The brief was to unpack the report and present its findings in a web-friendly format. At the time, it was still rare to see reports made user friendly for the world’s web audience. As a survey in 2014 discovered, a shocking third of the World Bank’s publications are never downloaded, 40 per cent were downloaded just 100 times, and only 13 per cent were downloaded more than 250 times in their lifetime (The Washington Post).
In the Mongolian language, the book explores how Mongolia’s vibrant rock and pop music scene led on business innovation and entrepreneurship in the country during the transition years (post-1989). Written by an ethnomusicologist, it details the key moments and events in this story, while splicing the narrative with first-person interviews with the major players.
MTV is available on cable television, bootleg CDs blare from kiosks and the latest news on the Spice Girls is available in one of dozens of entertainment newspapers. Despite the flood of foreign music it is local musicians who the youth turn to to voice their new-found freedoms, dreams and angst. Pop music researcherPeter Marsh swings to the new beat of the steppe…
It is something that would have horrified the old socialist leaders. Pop singer T. Ariunaa – Mongolia’s answer to Madonna – is doing what she does best: pushing the barriers of what a performer can and can’t do. Notorious in the local press as “Mongolia’s Queen of the Erotic,” she struts onto the stage of the Non-Stop – one of the newest and trendiest disco clubs in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar – wearing a black silk robe over black lingerie bikini underwear. Jumping into her hit song, “Telephone Number”, she sings the lines,
When you begin to take off your shirt, I am happy you’re staying;
When your hot breath is near me, the lights go out,
Cheekily writhing her torso, seductively opening and closing her robe, she teases her audience. And her audience, mostly Mongolian youth from the late teens to early thirties, take it all in with good humour, smiling and giggling. Whether they like her music or not, they appreciate what she’s doing and are having fun. The message of free expression is reflective of the enormous changes in attitudes over this decade.
“I like Ariunaa very much,” says 30-year-old Sukhbaatar, a graphic designer. Wearing a dress shirt, slacks and noticebly shiny shoes, he’s sitting with his two friends, glasses of beer in hand, watching the show. “She has a powerful voice,” he says gesticulating towards the stage. “She has a peculiar style, and this kind of style should be developed in Mongolia.
“But we don’t admire her as a singer,” he says with a wry laugh.
Not long ago, when this landlocked Northeast Asian nation was still subject to Soviet-backed socialist rule, pop-rock musicians like Ariunaa would never have been allowed to bring such explicit expressions of ‘the erotic’ anywhere near the public stage. Ariunaa’s boldness and charisma, which have made her one of Mongolia’s most well-known and controversial young pop stars, show something of the new openness and growing diversity that characterizes the emerging popular music industry in capitalist Mongolia. There are girl bands like Spike, boy bands like Nomiin Talst and Camerton and pop divas like Saraa.
A typical concert in Ulaanbaatar, like this one at the Non-Stop – a converted public gymnasium which opened earlier this year – consists of a succession of live Mongolian bands interspersed with breaks for dancing to Western pop, disco and techno music. The styles of music in these concerts fall into what the Mongolians call pop-rock, which ranges from rock ‘n’ roll, soft rock, and heavy metal rock to techno, hip-hop and rap. Mongolian music fans today now have a wide choice of styles to choose from.
Someone who would know about this well is the ‘elder statesman’ of rock, D. Jargalsaikhan. Wearing leather cowboy boots, sequined leather pants and a leather jacket, and with his black hair streaming down over his shoulders, Jargalsaikhan sees the new diversity of groups as a positive sign of the times, as he said in a recent newspaper interview.
“In the stores today there are maybe 10 different varieties of sausage: salted, unsalted, spiced and so on. You can then look at them all and then choose the one you want, like spiced sausage. It’s the same thing with the music business in Mongolia today. In the era of the market economy many different bands and singers have come out, and the listeners can choose the recordings of those bands and music styles that they like. … The most important thing is that the other bands or styles of singers should not be ignored. All of them have a wish to do something. Usually, those who criticize different styles or forms of music are people with too much time on their hands.”
Although turning 40 this year, Jargalsaikhan is not a man with too much time on his hands. As head of the Mongolian Singer’s Association, his many responsibilities keep him on the run. In between numerous breaks to answer calls on his cell phone, Jargalsaikhan tells me about being a rocker in the 1970s and ’80s, which he terms the “Golden Era” of rock in Mongolia, and the difficulties they faced. “Because Mongolia was ruled by one party, the Revolutionary [Socialist] Party [from 1921 to 1990], there was little foreign influence allowed into the country. Rock and pop were not to be found on the [state-controlled] radio or TV, and aside from records and cassettes brought into the country by individuals coming from Europe and Russia, people here had very little experience with the music. … It was easier for the early rock-pop musicians to take examples from folk music, which was close to them, which they had been listening to since their childhood.” Much of the early music included settings of popular folk songs and melodies in the rock genre. And the youth, eager for alternatives to the state-sponsored cultural offerings, found the music to their liking.
The popularity of this early rock-pop, or so-called folk-pop groups soon drew the attention of the socialist party, which saw opportunities to use the music for the purpose of advancing its mission in Mongolia. In exchange for the state government’s granting of musical instruments, rehearsal and performance spaces, and concert and touring opportunities, the early bands were closely watched, their actions restricted by suspicious government officials. “Everything was planned by the government, and we had to do what it had planned,” says Jargalsaikhan. “For example, when we were abroad, we couldn’t go to the discos nor arrive at the hotel late. We couldn’t go where we wanted. There were conflicts between the singers and musicians and the government representatives [sent to oversee the tour]. If I spoke to foreigners, I would be considered a spy. Who I spoke with was also controlled. At that time, the social condition in Mongolia was like that of North Korea today.”
Considered by the government to be a “capitalist art,” the direct imitation of Western rock was not allowed. Mongolian bands instead had to create a unique Mongolian style of the music that drew from traditional folk or classical musical and literary traditions. Band members were often compelled to compose songs to lyrics written by members of the powerful Mongolian Union of Writers. “It was difficult for musicians to play their own compositions, and they were often forbidden to do so,” recalls Jargalsaikhan. “For the concert programmes, our songs had to include the topics of Mongolia and the Soviet Union, as well as the Mongolian love for Nature or for Father and Mother. … The topic of love between a man and woman was considered to be too personal for the public stage, and was almost forbidden.”
But rock and pop musicians gained more and more freedoms of expression as political and social reforms were introduced in Mongolia throughout the 1980s. “The rock-pop musicians of the 1970s became more skilled and their abilities improved,” says Jargalsaikahn. “They began to compose at the level of professional composers. Also, the older generations wanted to give more artistic freedoms to the youth at the same time as the Party controls were being lifted.” And the youth, in turn, were more intent on creating traditions of music of their own generation. “The young rock-pop musicians wanted to hand-down their own music to the next generation-their own pop-rock art.
Jargalsaikhan gained fame throughout Mongolia for his 1988 song “Chinggis Khan,” when he was lead singer of the band by the same name. Making use of traditional folk music instruments alongside of the group’s electric guitars, synthesizers and drums, the song praises the 13th century Mongolian leader as a great, if historically misunderstood, man who always had in mind the good of the Mongolian nation–and this at a time when expressing such sentiments could have landed him in prison. “I had to show my civil courage to sing this song. But many of my friends and fellow composers encouraged me to write and perform it.”
His was the voice of a new generation, one seeking more freedoms to express Mongolian identity in new ways. The efforts of many musicians of his generation contributed to the popular political movements and protests that eventually led, in 1990, to the downfall of the socialist government and the introduction of democratic and market economic reforms throughout the nation.
In the new social and cultural climate of the late-1980s and early ’90s, musicians saw it as their responsibility to introduce Western rock music and popular culture to Mongolia. Besides Jargalsaikhan’s Chinggis Khan (“soft rock”), other groups came onto the popular music scene, including bands like Haranga (“heavy-metal/grunge”) and Hurd (“metal rock”).
The leader and percussionist of the group Hurd (“Speed”), D. Ganbayar, saw it as a national service to his people to introduce his group’s unique form of Western-style rock. “The Mongolian people, and especially the youth, don’t want [their bands] to imitate Western rock art. They want a pop-rock with its own specific character, music that’s different from other types of Western rock-pop, music with its own national character.” Wearing a leather jacket and black hair down to his chest, Ganbayar, moves to the edge of his chair. “No one but us will introduce this kind of music to the Mongolian people. We serve our people. It’s our duty to introduce Western music to the Mongolian people through the Mongolian language and Mongolian melodies. We want to show that Mongolian rock-pop has its own unique character.”
Nearing a decade of life, Hurd continues to experiment with new sounds and performance styles. They recently softened their driving, heavy metal style in two “Unplugged” concerts given at another new disco club in Ulaanbaatar, Top Ten, a cavernous warehouse located in a former cultural centre. This was the first time any rock group had tried such a concert idea in Mongolia. Even on acoustic guitars, however, the group, consisting of a bass, two guitars, drums, percussion and keyboards, managed to fill the club with their sound and fury. Their fans packed the house, and the lead singer, Tumurtsog, needed little effort to get them to sing along with him on many songs.
Hurd and Haranga are still very popular groups in Mongolia, but in the past years few new heavy metal or hard rock groups have come onto the pop-rock scene here. Instead, a new generation of popular singers and music groups have been working their way up and into the limelight of the concert stages. These are youths that mostly eschew the long hair and leather jackets of the older groups in favor of short, styled hair and suits and ties. The music would be recognized in the West as techno, hip-hop, and pop along the lines of the Backstreet Boys, Celene Dion and the Spice Girls, and is almost always electronically produced in recording studios and then backgrounded to the singers and dancers themselves on stage with the use of a tape player.
Mostly in their late teens and early 20s, these performers appeal to Mongolian audiences with their singing, dancing and stage presence. One of the most popular of the current crop of bands is Har Sarnai (“Black Rose”), a “hip-hop techno” male duo, famous for their dancing, nationalistic song lyrics and sometimes outrageous clothes and hair styles.
In their concerts they often come out on stage wearing specially designed silken dels (traditional Mongolian robes worn by both men and women), with sunglasses and big bushy black and gray colored wigs on their heads. As the heavy techno beat of one of their most famous songs, “Alarm,” begins, they launch into their synchronized dance routines and lyrics, which exhort Mongolians to wake up from their dreaming and set to work producing a new society. Their audiences watch from their tables-as Mongolians hardly ever dance while the bands are performing-clearly enjoying the show.
“Har Sarnai is my favorite band,” says 19-year-old Buyanbaatar, a student at the Mongolian State University. “I like how different they are. Their clothes, their behavior on stage is different. And the songs that they sing, their dances and their clothes and style are all well suited together.”
Even older youth, like Sukhbaatar, age 30, mirror these sentiments. “I like Har Sarnai because I like their style and their dancing very much. I also like their unique styles of hair.” His friend Tsooj, age 31, adds, “In America you have rap bands, like New Kids [on the Block], and they dance really well. We like dancing very much. We are not too old for this!”
To both of them, the infectiousness of the new music pop scene transcends traditional age definitions. “I started to listen to music from the Beatles and other foreign bands. But now it’s become very nice in Mongolia. It’s just impossible not to be a fan because we are young people. We don’t think we are old. We are young enough, and we are here to support our favorite bands, and we will scream and whistle with everyone else!”
How audience members of different age groups can mix together at concerts and share such similar tastes in musical genres is perhaps unique to Mongolia. “One of the reasons why even the older generations like the new bands of the younger generations,” says Norov-Aragcha, a professional artist, aged 38, “is that in their youth, when they were 18 or 20, such bands didn’t exist here. We like new things like the younger people, and this music is new to Mongolia.”
But while he appreciates the new opportunities that the new bands have to perform their music in Mongolia, Norov-Aragcha adds that something is certainly missing from their music. “I like Ariunaa, and appreciate what she does. But all these bands and singers [of the young generation], although they have their own styles, they are generally on one level. None of them stands out from the rest. Maybe because of my profession, I prefer something new, something very different from the others. Haranga and Jargalsaikhan, they are our generation. They have feelings, they are making efforts with their music, and they are honest to their music. In their time [late-1980s and early 1990s] it was very difficult, but they did it. They have real talent, real feeling in their music.”
“Now I’m looking at all these new bands and singers, but still the one that I want hasn’t appeared. … That is, something which suits today’s conditions and atmosphere. … Something very powerful, very hard. Something like a Kurt Cobain.”
While not new to Mongolia, pop-rock’s growing diversity certainly is. The general feeling these days seems to be one of celebration of its freedoms and appreciation of its diversity, without the isolation of audiences into genres that is typical in the West. Given the difficulties Mongolia’s youth now face as they struggle to adapt to a society undergoing enormous change, a Mongolian “Kurt Cobain” may be just around the corner.
Background: This is the original text from the brochure UNDP in Mongolia: The Guide first published in 1997. It, for the first time, provided a rolling update on what the United Nations was doing in Mongolia, offering key contacts and data to help advance human development in the country. It introduced transparency to the UN’s work in the country and made it easier to hold programme and project staff to account.
Mongolia – Population
With an area of more than 1.5 million square kilometres and a population of 2.38 million as of October 1997, Mongolia has a population density of only 1.5 people per square kilometre, one of the lowest in the world. The country has a relatively low growth rate of 1.6 per cent (1995), down from 2.5 per cent in 1989. At this rate, Mongolia’s population will reach 2.5 million by the year 2000.
Despite the popular image of Mongolians as nomadic herders, it is an increasingly urbanized country – 51.9 per cent of the population is urban, 48.1 per cent rural. More than one quarter of Mongolians live in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The other major urban centres are Darhan (pop. 90,000) and Erdenet (pop. 65,000 ).
The country is divided into 21 aimags (provinces), plus the autonomous capital region. The aimags are:
In the centre: Tuv, Uvurhangai, Arhangai
In the north: Bulgan, Selenge, Hovsgul, Zavhan, Darhan-Uul, Orhon
In the east: Hentii, Dornod, Suhbaatar
In the west: Hovd, Uvs, Bayan-Olgii, Gov-Altai
In the south: Dundgov, Dornogov, Omnogov, Bayanhongor, Gobisumber
The People:
About 86 per cent of the country’s population are Kalkh Mongols. Another 7 per cent are Turkic in origin, mostly Kazakhs living in the western aimags of Bayan-Olgii and Hovd. The rest belong to a wide variety of ethnic groups, including the Buryat, Dariganga, Bayad, Zakchin and Uriankhai. Mongolia’s smallest ethnic group is the Tsaatan, about 200 of whom live as reindeer herders in the far north of the country.
During the communist period, Mongolia was home to tens of thousands of Russians. Few remain.
More than 4 million Mongols live outside Mongolia, in Russia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia.
Human Development:
– Mongolia’s per capita GDP is U.S. $359 (1995). But this fails to take into account the cashless subsistence and barter economy widespread in rural areas.
– Poverty, though widespread, is difficult to tabulate. 1996 government figures put the poverty rate at 19.2 per cent – 19.8 per cent for rural areas, 18.7 for urban areas. But State Statistical Office figures for October 1997 indicate 36.8 per cent of urban residents and 27.5 per cent of rural Mongolians live below the poverty line.
– Omnogov, Gobisumber, Hovsgol, Ovorhangai and Bayanhongor are the aimags with the highest poverty rates.
– The average monthly household income in September 1997 was 58,516.7 tugrugs (U.S. $73). Average expenditure was 58,124.8 tugrugs. In 1995, 48 per cent of household expenditure went on food. In poor households, the figure was 64 per cent.
Social Data:
Life expectancy: 63.8 years (1995)
Infant mortality rate: 40 per 1000
Under five mortality rate: 56.4 per 1000
Maternal mortality rate: 185.2 per 100,000 (1995)
One-year-old immunization rate: tuberculosis 94.4 per cent, measles 85.2 per cent (1995)
Access to safe drinking water: rural 89.9 per cent, urban 46.1 per cent (1995)
Access to sanitation: 74 per cent (1995)
Adult literacy rate:
men 97.5 per cent,
women 96.3 per cent
Primary school net enrollment: 93.4 per cent
Secondary school net enrollment: 56.9 per cent
Physicians: 26 per 10,000
Hospital beds: 9.9 per 1000
Daily calorie intake: 2278.2
Data 1996 unless otherwise indicated. Sources: State Statistical Office, Human Development Report Mongolia 1997
Mongolia – Economy
An Economy in Transition:
After 70 years of centrally planned economy, Mongolia is embracing free-market principles with a vengeance. Economic liberalization began under the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party government in the early 1990s. The Democratic Coalition government, elected in June 1996, has vowed sweeping economic changes, including privatization of state assets, liberalization of trade and promotion of foreign investment.
The foreign investment law now encourages foreign investment in the form of share purchases, joint ventures and wholly foreign-owned concerns. Mining companies are given significant tax holidays. In May, 1997 parliament abolished customs duties expect on alcohol, tobacco and oil products.
All of this has been a shock to Mongolia and Mongolians. The country’s GDP shrank by a third in the early 1990s, though it has slowly recovered since. Inflation topped 300 per cent in 1993, but was brought down to below 50 per cent by 1997. The tugrug fell from 40 to U.S. $1 in 1991 to 800 to the dollar in 1997. Unemployment officially stands at 6.5 per cent – unofficial estimates are much higher.
The government’s ambitious privatization scheme has stalled; manufacturing and exports are down; imports are up. Adding to the problems is the fact that world prices for Mongolia’s major export items – copper and cashmere – have fallen.
The state retains at least 50 per cent ownership of the nation’s flagship enterprises, including the national airline, MIAT, the Gobi cashmere company and the power stations.
Mongolia has a resource-based economy, exporting mostly raw materials and importing mostly processed goods. The top exports are mineral products, textiles, base minerals, hides, skins and furs and animals and animal products. The major imports include petroleum products, industrial equipment and consumer goods.
Mongolia’s major trading partners are its two neighbours, China and Russia, though Korea and Japan are becoming more important – and the number-one export destination is Switzerland.
Sidebar: The rural economy
Half of Mongolia’s population is rural, and herding remains the backbone of the Mongolian economy. Agriculture accounts for 30 per cent of the nation’s GDP. The number of herding households grew during the economic turmoil of the early 1990s, and now stands at more than 170,000; there are 30 million head of livestock in Mongolia. Herders produce meat, skins and furs; more and more herders are investing in cashmere goats, a substantial money-earner.
Cultivation of crops, on the other hand, is limited. Before 1990, Mongolia was self-sufficient in cereals and even exported to the Soviet Union. But the sector suffered badly in the early 1990s. The 1997 harvest was 239,000 tonnes, 56 per cent of 1991-95 levels and only 40 per cent of pre-1990 harvests. Mongolia must now import 40 per cent of its cereal needs, a factor that contributes to a vulnerable food-security situation. Cultivation of vegetables is up, but remains minor – only 31,000 tonnes in 1997.
Sidebar: Rich in resources
Mongolia is resource-rich. This vast territory contains 15 per cent of the world’s supply of fluorspar and significant deposits of copper, molybdenum, iron, phosphates, tin, nickel, zinc, tungsten and gold, as well as at least 100 billion tonnes of coal.
Copper is the nation’s number one export.
Minerals account for more than a third of Mongolia’s GDP and earn half of its hard currency. Gold production is increasing.
Mongolia also contains significant reserves of oil, which could transform the economy. But infrastructure and transportation limitations mean that commercial extraction is limited. The completion of a pipeline to China could change all this.
Economic Data:
Exchange rate: $1 = Tg 808 (Nov 1997)
GDP: Tg 185.5 billion (1996)
GDP per capita: Tg 228,605 (1996)
Inflation: 325 per cent (1992), 53 per cent (1996)
State budget expenditure: Tg 203.6 billion (Jan-Oct 1997)
State budget revenue: Tg 176 billion (Jan-Oct 1997)
Seven decades of communist rule in Mongolia began to crumble in 1990, when the collapse of the old Eastern Bloc brought the first pro-democracy demonstrations. The ruling Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which had already initiated a Mongolian version of glasnost, permitted the nation’s first multiparty elections in July, 1990.
Superior organization helped the MPRP win both the 1990 and 1992 elections (taking 71 of 76 parliamentary seats in the latter), but reform picked up speed. In 1992, the country adopted a new Constitution that enshrined human rights, private ownership and a state structure based on separation of power between legislative and judicial branches.
In the June 1996 election, major opposition groups united to form the Democratic Coalition, made up of the National Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Believers’ Party and the Green Party. Somewhat to its own surprise, the Coalition won a healthy 50 of 76 seats in the State Ikh Hural, or parliament. The composition of the Hural is now: National Democrats 35, Social Democrats 15, MPRP 25, Mongolian Traditional United Party 1.
In addition to their economic reforms, the Democrats have carried out radical restructuring of government, slashing the number of Ministries from 14 to 9.
The government has a healthy majority, but tensions sometimes emerge between the coalition partners. Mongolia’s transition to democracy has been remarkably peaceful, and the young democracy is robust – there are now more than 20 political parties in the country.
But economic hardship has caused resentments. In the 1997 Presidential election, voters elected N. Bagabandi, the candidate of the MPRP. In the fall of 1997, the government had to face demonstrations from students and pensioners and an opposition campaign that led to a confidence vote in parliament — a vote the government easily survived.
Political structure:
Mongolia has a parliamentary system of government, with a 76-seat legislature called the State Ikh Hural. The President, directly elected for a four-year term, is second in authority to the legislature, but he appoints judges and has the power of veto (which can be overturned by a 2/3 vote in parliament).
Chronology:
1911 collapse of Manchu Qing Dynasty; Mongolia declares its independence
1919 China invades Mongolia
1921 with Soviet help, Mongolia gains final independence from China
1924 Mongolian People’s Republic declared
1990 pro-democracy protests; Constitution amended; first multiparty elections
1992 second multiparty elections; new Constitution adopted
1996 Democratic Coalition elected as Mongolia’s first non-communist government, headed by Prime Minister Enkhsaikhan
1997 N. Bagabandi from the MPRP elected President
Voter turnout:
1996 elections: 92.2 per cent
1996 local Hural: 64.0 per cent
1997 presidential: 85.1 per cent
Mongolia – Society and Culture
Mongolia has a unique and durable traditional culture, centred around the herding lifestyle. Herders remain semi-nomadic, moving their animals with the seasons as they have for centuries
Many urban Mongolians retain strong links to the land, both literal and sentimental, and the country’s performing and visual arts often celebrate the landscape and the animals — especially horses — that are central to Mongolian life. Mongolia has several distinctive musical instruments and styles, including the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle), the long song (urtyn duu) and the throat-singing style known as khoomi.
After seven decades of communism, Mongolians are once again celebrating their traditional culture, and embracing the image and legacy of the most famous Mongolian of all time – Chinggis Khan, who in the 13th century initiated the Mongol Empire, the greatest land empire the world has ever known. He gives his name to everything from a brand of vodka to a luxury hotel, and centres for academic Chinggis research have been set up.
In sports, Mongolians favour the “three manly sports” — wrestling, archery and horse racing — that form the core of the annual festival known as Naadam. Mongolian wrestlers have won a number of medals at international competitions and are even entering the field of Japanese Sumo.
The 1990s have seen a flowering of freedom of expression. Mongolia has an extraordinary 525 newspapers and a wide range of magazines, while the first private radio and television stations have been established.
Religion:
Mongolians have been Buddhists since the 16th century, when the Mongolian king, Altan Khan, was converted by Tibetan lamas. In the pre-revolutionary period, Mongolia was ruled by a series of Living Buddhas, or Jebtzun Damba. The eighth, and last, Jebtzun Damba was removed after the communist takeover.
Traditionally, monasteries were centres both of learning and of power. It’s estimated Mongolia had 100,000 monks, or lamas, in 1921 — one third of the male population. In the 1930s, this power became the focus of a ruthless series of purges that reached a climax in 1937. Most of the country’s monasteries were destroyed, and as many as 17,000 monks were killed.
Today, Mongolia is once again embracing its Buddhist heritage. Monasteries are being restored, and are once again crowded with worshippers. The Dalai Lama is an enormously popular figure and has visited the country several times.
For many Mongolians, Buddhism is flavoured with traces of Shamanism, an even more ancient spirituality.
Mongolia also has a significant Muslim community — about 6 per cent of the population. These are mostly ethnic Kazakhs living in the far west of the country. The opening-up of the country has led to an influx of Christian missionaries, and this remains a source of some tension and debate.
A Young Country:
Mongolia is a remarkably young country — more than 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 30, and 40 per cent of Mongolians are younger than 16. This young generation, with its embrace of Western styles and ideas, is changing the complexion of the country. Western pop music and North American sports like basketball have a huge following among Mongolia’s youth. So, too, do homegrown artists like the pop groups Nikiton and Spike and the singer Saraa.
Social Data:
Television sets: 6.2 per 100 (1995)
Newspapers: 2 per 100 (1995)
Number of telephones: 82,800
Marriage: 10.9 per 1000 over 18
Divorce: 0.7 per 1000 over 18
Number of pensioners: 287,200
Crimes reported: 20,454 (Jan-Oct 97)
As percentage of same period in 1996: 114.4 per cent
Data 1996 unless indicated. Sources: State Statistical Office, Human Development Report Mongolia 1997
In the Mongolian language, the book details effective ways to live in harmony with the environment while achieving development goals. Based on three years’ work in Mongolia – a Northeast Asian nation coping with desertification, mining, and climate change – the book presents tested strategies.
David South Consulting 
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