Eastern Europe: Around the World

Tallinn, Riga, Helsinki and St Petersburg - Mosco: A Journey from Medieval Streets to Digital Governance (August – September 2024)

In August 2014, I travelled to Estonia as part of an Indian delegation of senior officers attending the e-Governance Leadership Programme organised by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. Estonia was the principal destination of our study tour, but the journey gave us the opportunity to experience four very different faces of Northern Europe—Tallinn, Helsinki, Riga and St Petersburg.

It turned out to be much more than a training programme. It became a journey through history, technology, culture, friendship, food, humour—and, in St Petersburg, even a lesson in the practical dangers of being an unsuspecting tourist.

The Baltic Sea and the First Glimpse of Tallinn

Our approach to Tallinn was itself memorable. We travelled by ferry from Helsinki across the Baltic Sea. The vast stretch of water, the cool wind, the moving deck and the skyline gradually disappearing behind us gave the journey a special charm. For a traveller accustomed to the crowded roads and railway platforms of India, a Baltic ferry offered a completely different experience—quiet, spacious and almost meditative.

Tallinn appeared gradually on the horizon, looking less like a modern capital and more like a city emerging from a medieval painting.

Tallinn is small by the standards of world capitals, but it has an unusual character. Its Old Town, with cobbled streets, stone walls, towers and European-style buildings, makes one feel that one has suddenly walked into the fifteenth century. The medieval atmosphere is not preserved merely in museums; it is alive in the streets, restaurants, churches and public squares.

The Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Among the places worth seeing are the Town Hall Square, the old fortress walls, St Nicholas Church, the Parliament and Government buildings, Toompea Hill, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and the Freedom Monument. The contrast between the old city and the modern digital state is striking. A medieval street can lead you to a completely paperless government office.

One of the things that amused us was the Estonian habit of greeting one another with a phrase that sounded to our Indian ears like “terveks” or “terviseks”. We were told that it was essentially a wish for good health. When asked how they were, many Estonians simply answered “normal”—neither particularly good nor bad. Perhaps it was an expression of their temperament: reserved, practical and understated.

A Medieval Dinner—and a Little Bit of India

One evening, our local guide, perhaps sensing our homesickness, arranged dinner at an Indian restaurant, Hotel Maharaja, on Pikk Street. Our techno-savvy colleague Mishraji immediately took charge of navigation through his mobile GPS. Unfortunately, technology did not make us smarter that evening. We turned left, right, left again and somehow managed to lose our way.

When we finally reached the restaurant, a large wooden elephant and an image of Lakshmi seemed to welcome us. We laughed at ourselves. After travelling thousands of kilometres from India, here we were eating chhole, chicken, paneer pakoda, crispy roti and gulab jamun. We wondered why Indians sometimes cross oceans only to search for the food they eat at home.

Tallinn offered another culinary time machine at Olde Hansa, a restaurant designed entirely around medieval life. Candlelight, wooden furniture, old paintings, traditionally dressed servers, earthen-looking vessels and medieval-style food created the feeling of dining five hundred years ago.

We were told that drinking beer was common in medieval Europe because drinking water was not always safe. The restaurant therefore served honey beer and other medieval drinks. The food included salmon, mushrooms, barley, vegetables, bread and apple pie. For a vegetarian Indian, the mushrooms, hot vegetables, barley and bread were more reassuring than the adventurous medieval beverages!

The experience taught me something about tourism: the best restaurants do not merely serve food; they serve history.

Estonia: A Small Country with a Big Digital Idea

The real purpose of our visit, however, was not medieval Tallinn but e-Estonia.

Estonia had regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a small country of around 1.35 million people, with limited resources. Yet instead of attempting to reproduce the bureaucratic systems of larger countries, Estonia decided to build something different.

The phrase that stayed with me was:

“ICT for Identity.”

The Estonian approach was not simply to put existing government forms on computers. It was to redesign government around the citizen.

The national electronic ID card became the foundation. It was not merely an identity card but also a means of authentication and digital signature. Mobile-ID extended the same idea to mobile phones. The underlying philosophy was simple: one citizen, one trusted digital identity.

What impressed me even more was the idea that the citizen remained the owner of his or her personal data. Government agencies could access information when authorised, but such access left an audit trail. Privacy was not treated as an afterthought; it was built into the legal and technological framework.

For an Indian administrator, this was a powerful lesson. Digitisation without trust can become another form of bureaucracy. Digital governance must therefore combine convenience with accountability, interoperability with privacy, and speed with security.

X-Road: When Government Departments Talk to One Another

Another concept that fascinated me was X-Road, the secure system through which different government databases communicate with one another.

The importance of X-Road was not the technology alone. Its real significance was that departments were prevented from becoming isolated islands of information.

That reminded me of a familiar administrative problem in India. A citizen may possess the same information in ten different government offices, yet each office may ask him to submit it again.

Estonia was trying to reverse that relationship: the government should exchange information internally instead of making the citizen carry information from one office to another.

That was perhaps the most important administrative lesson I brought home.

The Cabinet Without Files

Our visit to the Estonian Cabinet Secretariat provided another striking example.

We were taken through the Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet room. There were hardly any files. Ministers sat around a modern table, and the Cabinet worked through an e-Cabinet system.

The system had been introduced years earlier and allowed ministers to see the agenda, read documents, make comments and record decisions electronically.

The result was not simply a paperless office. Cabinet meetings had become much shorter because ministers could study the material beforehand. We were told that some meetings lasted only a few minutes.

But one sentence from the Estonian official stayed with me:

It is not the software that has to change; it is the practice.

This was an important lesson for a civil servant. Technology cannot reform an organisation if people continue to follow outdated procedures electronically. True e-governance begins with administrative reform and process re-engineering; computers come afterwards.

The Police That Could See

The Estonian e-Police system gave another fascinating example.

A patrol vehicle was equipped with a mobile workstation connected to relevant databases. An officer checking a vehicle could obtain information about the driving licence, vehicle registration, insurance, population records and other relevant information almost instantly.

What earlier required a radio call and considerable waiting could now be completed within seconds.

The positioning system also showed the location of patrol vehicles, enabling the control room to send the nearest available vehicle to an incident.

I found this especially relevant to Indian policing. Technology was not being used merely to produce reports after an incident; it was being used to improve the actual response of the police officer in the field.

A School Where Parents Enter the Classroom Digitally

The Estonian e-School system was another pleasant surprise. Parents could see attendance, grades, homework and notices. Teachers could enter assignments and marks; students could see their academic information; and parents could report absences.

In India, parents traditionally wait for a report card or parent-teacher meeting to know how their child is performing. Estonia had brought the classroom into the parent's digital space.

It was a simple example of how technology could improve not only government administration but everyday relationships between institutions and citizens.

Free Wi-Fi as Social Infrastructure

Tallinn was also a city where Wi-Fi seemed to be everywhere—in public places, cafés, transport areas, libraries and even rural locations.

The idea fascinated me because free connectivity was being treated almost like public infrastructure. Businesses, citizens, telecom companies and government had all become stakeholders.

It reminded me that digital governance cannot be built merely by creating websites. A digital state first needs digitally connected citizens.

The Company That Could Be Born in Eighteen Minutes

One of our final sessions was on e-Government in Justice. Mr Ingmar Vali explained the online company-registration system.

A person could fill in the required information, make necessary changes to the Articles of Association, pay the prescribed fee and submit the application online—without visiting a notary or carrying a file from office to office.

We were told that a company could be created through the online system in about 18 minutes, with formal registration completed within a couple of hours.

For someone who had spent decades watching Indian entrepreneurs navigate forms, files, counters and signatures, this was almost magical.

But again, the real lesson was not speed alone. Estonia had first simplified the process and then digitised it.

That distinction is crucial.

Putting a complicated procedure online does not make it citizen-friendly. Simplifying the procedure and then putting it online does.

“Discover Your Inner Einstein”

At MECTORY, the innovation centre associated with Tallinn University of Technology, we encountered another side of Estonia. The centre encouraged students and international participants to experiment, innovate and discover their “inner Einstein”.

We learnt about an MSc programme in e-Governance Technologies and Services and saw how Estonia was investing not merely in software but in the people who would design the next generation of government.

This was important for me because I had always believed that administration is ultimately about people. Technology is only an instrument. Institutions become innovative when people are encouraged to question, experiment and learn.

Our Favourite Annela

Training programmes are remembered not only for lectures but for people.

For our group, one such person was Annela Kirrats, our training manager. Her cheerful presence, efficient coordination and warm interaction made the otherwise formal programme much more enjoyable.

On the final day she appeared in a bright lemon-yellow suit, with pearl earrings, a gold chain and black shoes. She had become something of a celebrity among the delegation. Vinay Thakur happily posed for a photograph with her, joking that it deserved a place in his drawing room.

At the farewell dinner, her presence naturally became part of the group's entertainment. Our colleague Sanjeev Jha appeared to be the man of the day, enjoying a generous share of Annela's attention.

The final dinner at Hotel Solaris, however, proved an amusing disappointment. Without Annela's cheerful presence, everything seemed bland. Vegetarians complained about sandwiches and potatoes; non-vegetarians found the chicken uninspiring. Beer, wine, chicken, salad and cake were sampled but failed to rescue the evening.

I wrote in my diary that the Last Supper in Tallinn was tasteless without Annela.

Riga: The Singing City

On 24 August, we undertook a fast-track journey from Tallinn to Riga, the capital of Latvia. The road journey itself was part of the experience. We left Tallinn at about 7:30 in the morning and reached Riga around 12:30 p.m., after a short halt at the international border.

The limited driving hours of our driver gave us only a few hours in the city, so we had to become tourists in a hurry.

I remember the line I wrote at the time:

“Dum dum diga diga—Riga nahi dekha to kuchh nahi dekha.”

Riga, situated on the Daugava River, felt like the Paris of Northern Europe. It is a city of architecture, music and public spaces. The Freedom Monument, Town Hall Square, churches, opera house, railway station, Central Market, parks, gardens and the bridges over the Daugava provide a remarkable mixture of history and modern European life.

Riga's history is also a history of successive powers—German, Polish, Swedish and Russian. Its buildings carry traces of these different periods.

We took a sightseeing bus, walked through the streets and tried to absorb as much as possible in the short time available. We missed a river cruise and several places that deserved more time, but even this hurried visit gave us a flavour of the city.

What impressed me most was the spirit of the people. Singing and dancing appeared to be part of Latvian cultural life. The city seemed to carry a deep memory of its struggle for freedom and identity.

Our driver Thomas added another dimension to the journey by narrating stories about the independence struggles of the Baltic countries. It made us realise that for these small nations, independence was not an abstract word. It was a lived memory.

St Petersburg: Beauty, History—and a Hard Lesson

From Tallinn I travelled onward to St Petersburg with my wife, Laxmi, who had not been with me in Tallinn but joined me for this part of the journey.

The journey by train took about six hours. At Narva, the Estonian border formalities were completed, followed by Russian immigration. The passport formalities were surprisingly smooth.

But St Petersburg presented a completely different challenge.

Most signs were in Russian and very few people we encountered could communicate comfortably in English. Suddenly, the confidence that comes naturally to a traveller in a familiar language disappeared.

After reaching the Vitebsky Railway Station, it was raining heavily. I had initially thought of walking to the hotel, but luggage and rain forced me to take a taxi. The driver asked for €20; after some good old Indian bargaining, he agreed to €10. At least one Indian administrative skill—negotiation—worked perfectly in Russia!

After leaving our luggage at the Ibis Hotel, we set out towards Nevsky Prospekt.

St Petersburg was magnificent. The River Neva, canals, bridges, grand palaces and monumental buildings reflected the ambition of Peter the Great. We took a boat ride through the canals and saw the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Winter Palace and the Hermitage complex, among other landmarks.

Nevsky Prospekt was alive with people. Street musicians and artists displayed their talent. In a few minutes, an artist could produce a pencil sketch of your face for a modest payment.

We walked for several kilometres, absorbing the architecture and atmosphere. The city had beauty on a monumental scale.

But our sightseeing soon became a lesson in another aspect of travel.

The Pickpocket on the Bus

Because of the language barrier, we were unable to understand the local public transport system properly. We boarded a local bus, trying to find our way.

Two pickpockets apparently noticed that we were foreigners and vulnerable. In the pressure and movement of the crowded bus, they managed to take my wallet.

I realised nothing immediately.

Only when we reached the palace and I put my hand into my pocket to buy the entrance tickets did I discover that the wallet was gone.

I had lost a substantial amount of money and, more seriously, a credit card.

The thief was remarkably quick. Within minutes, the card had already been used.

For someone accustomed to dealing with law and order as an administrator, being on the other side of the system was a humbling experience. I suddenly became an ordinary citizen—without local language, without local knowledge and without knowing where to turn.

Fortunately, I had a friend from the Indian Foreign Service whom we contacted. On his advice, we went to the police station and filed an FIR.

Nothing came of it.

The incident taught me a lesson that no training classroom could have taught: a traveller's greatest vulnerability is often not lack of money but lack of information.

A beautiful city can still contain clever thieves. A crowded public bus can become a perfect hunting ground for pickpockets. And when one does not understand the language, even asking for help becomes difficult.

Fortunately, there was a happy ending of sorts. The then Chairman of the State Bank of India was kind enough to help resolve the credit-card issue. Since the card's security mechanism had limited exposure, the disputed amount was ultimately waived.

I never again looked at a crowded foreign bus quite so casually.

Moscow: Lenin, Horse Carts and a Lesson in Cleanliness

From St Petersburg, Laxmi and I returned to Moscow by train. After the grandeur and waterways of St Petersburg, Moscow offered another kind of experience—larger, more imposing and deeply marked by the history of twentieth-century Russia. We spent some time exploring the city and visited the famous Red Square area. One of the most striking sights was Lenin’s Mausoleum, where the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin has been preserved and displayed. Standing before the mausoleum, I was struck by the extraordinary way in which political history can continue to occupy physical space long after the person himself has disappeared. Whatever one’s view of Lenin or Soviet history, the place felt less like an ordinary tourist attraction and more like a living museum of an era that had shaped a large part of the modern world.

But what stayed with me from Moscow was not only Lenin or the monumental architecture. It was a much smaller and surprisingly practical sight—a horse-drawn carriage moving through the city. The horse had a special collection bag tied behind it so that its droppings would not fall onto the road. I found myself smiling at the simplicity of the arrangement. A problem had been anticipated, and a small behavioural and administrative solution had been created.

Immediately, my thoughts went back to the streets of Indian villages, where cattle, buffaloes, horses and other animals routinely move through public spaces and leave behind waste. We spend enormous amounts of money and energy on cleanliness campaigns, but sometimes miss something more fundamental: the culture and habit required to sustain cleanliness. A broom can clean a road, but it cannot prevent the same road from becoming dirty again. For that, behaviour has to change.

I wondered why we could not adopt equally simple arrangements where they are needed. If an animal is being taken through a public street, why not provide a practical way to collect its waste? It may sound trivial, but public administration is often about such seemingly trivial details. Cleanliness is not achieved only through sweeping, penalties or campaigns; it is nurtured through everyday habits, design and systems that make the right behaviour easy.

That little horse cart therefore gave me a bigger lesson than I had expected. Swachhata is not merely a programme; it has to become a culture. We can build toilets, provide garbage bins and launch cleanliness drives, but unless citizens, institutions and local systems learn to prevent litter and waste at the source, cleanliness will remain a recurring campaign rather than a sustained way of life.

From Moscow we finally flew back to Delhi. As the aircraft lifted away, I realised that this journey had taken me through very different worlds—Helsinki's quiet Baltic waters, Tallinn's medieval streets and remarkably modern digital governance, Riga's cultural resilience, St Petersburg's imperial grandeur and Moscow's powerful historical memory. I had travelled as a tourist and a civil servant, but I returned with observations that belonged to both roles. Technology, culture, administration and even something as humble as a horse's waste bag can teach the same lesson: good governance often begins by noticing small problems and finding simple, practical ways of preventing them.

What Five Cities Taught Me

Looking back, the journey from Helsinki to Tallinn, Riga, St Petersburg and finally Moscow was much more than a tourist circuit. Each city left behind a different impression, and together they became a journey through history, culture, technology and administration.

Helsinki gave us the serenity of the Baltic and the simple pleasure of travelling across the sea.

Tallinn showed us how a small nation could transform itself through digital governance, administrative reform and citizen-centric technology.

Riga reminded us of the cultural strength of a people who had preserved their identity through centuries of foreign rule.

St Petersburg displayed the grandeur of Russian history—and reminded me that even an experienced traveller can become vulnerable when language, unfamiliarity and crowds come together.

Moscow added another kind of lesson. Lenin's preserved body reminded me of the enduring power of history, while the humble horse cart gave me a very practical lesson in civic cleanliness: sometimes a small, sensible arrangement can prevent a large public problem. The horse's waste bag was a simple reminder that cleanliness is not achieved merely by cleaning; it is sustained by anticipating problems and creating habits and systems to prevent them.

For me, however, Estonia remained the central experience. Its greatest lesson was not that government should become electronic. It was that government should become simpler.

The Estonian experience demonstrated that technology succeeds when political leadership, administrative reform, private initiative, citizen participation, digital identity, interoperability and trust move together.

As a civil servant, I had spent much of my career dealing with files, procedures, registers and institutional boundaries. In Estonia, I saw a glimpse of what administration could become when the citizen no longer had to carry the burden of the government's internal divisions.

Moscow, in its own quiet way, reinforced the same principle. Whether it was a sophisticated digital system in Tallinn or a simple bag attached to a horse cart, good governance often begins with identifying a problem, understanding human behaviour and designing a practical solution.

The deeper lesson was therefore simple:

The purpose of technology and administration is not to make government look modern. It is to make the life of the citizen easier, cleaner and more dignified.

That lesson stayed with me long after the Baltic Sea disappeared from view—and perhaps that is what makes a journey worthwhile: you return home not merely with photographs of places, but with a few ideas that continue to travel with you.