Water Institutional Reforms in Kyrgyzstan - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 123

money. They tolerate non payment and do hardly sanction it. 183 The first answer of the direc
tor of a RaiVodKhoz when asked about his wishes for future water management was hence
“that the farmer would get good yields.” 184 This shows that officials at the meso level are aware
of the difficult situation farmers are in and may explain why the former do not enforce pay
ment. 185 The economic conditions are not only a hindrance to ISF but also for the functioning
of WUAs, which involve farmers' financial contribution to O&M and staff payment. This was
confirmed by several other studies as well. Hassan et al. (2004: 32) come to the conclusion that
“[m]arket constraints are among the key obstacles of sustainable institutional change in water
resources management in Kyrgyzstan“. The same is stated by a Central Asian wide study of the
British Department for International Development (DFID, Mott MacDonald 2003: 10 10):
“Unless farms are profitable, irrigation management transfer will fail.”
Concerning the transfer of irrigation management to farmers, other institutional condi
tions of the agricultural sector besides the economic ones are significant. With agricultural
reform, farmers had to learn many new forms of organization: New forms of farms (coopera
tives, family farms, individual farms, etc.) are set up, then go bankrupt, and then are reestab
lished under a new label. Apart from this, people have been confronted in recent years with a
number of foreign experts coming to their villages and trying to make them member of various
organizations: agricultural cooperatives, microcredit unions, drinking water associations, and
water user associations. Farmers are often swamped with the many new organizations and new
names for old organizations on the local level without seeing the benefits. Also, the psycholog
ical aspect must be considered that after learning that kolkhozes and communism were 'bad',
everyone is now telling them to unite again into cooperatives and associations which often
remind them of socialist patterns and therefore cause a bit of mistrust (Hassan et al. 2004:
32). 186
Another constraint of the agricultural sector is its number of still prevailing clientelistic
features, although land reform together with other decentralization measures gave farmers
greater independence. Advantages in water access have often already been determined during
land reform, when the people with the respective powerful positions got allotted the fields near
the canals (Bichsel 2006: 84f). These farmers will receive enough water, while those at the end
of the channel are faced with scarcity. Not only land, but also technical equipment was not
distributed fairly during land reform: It did not stay with communal facilities, but was often
'bought' by wealthy individuals and must now be rented at expensive rates by the WUA. This
in turn has negative impacts on the O&M activities. 187 In this respect it is also interesting to
look at the role the FSK leaders still play. They often dominate local governance and power
structures and hence also WUAs. These clientelistic features are best analyzed as part of local
governance and will therefore be discussed in the following chapter.
183 As described above, such sanctions are also technically difficult to implement, as in many places it is hardly
impossible to exclude a single field from water delivery in practive.
184 Author's interview with the director of the Sokuluk RaiVodKhoz , Sokuluk, 05/10/2005.
185 Mamaraimov (2007) describes a similar situation concerning fertilizer, which many farmers cannot afford to buy.
He observed a high-ranking official requesting from his colleagues not to bother farmers who are smuggling fertilizers
from Uzbekistan.
186 Author's interview with an independent water expert, Bishkek, 09/28/2004.
187 Informal conversation with a WUA director, Sokuluk raion , 09/06/2005.