Comparing the Politics of Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 183

aksakalov ) in Kyrgyzstan, in Tajikistan the mahalla committee and the village assembly. The
positions in WUAs are usually staffed with the main village actors who are also dominating the
other mentioned organizations. In all villages of the case studies, the respective director of the
agricultural cooperative that succeeded the kolkhoz or sovkhoz is the chairman of the WUA.
There is low awareness and use of participation mechanisms among water users. In the
Kyrgyz case study, the farmers at least knew about WUA, while many farmers in Tajikistan
were not even aware that they are WUA members with participation rights. Farmers in general
do not perceive the WUA as an independent organization. Often they think it is a special de
partment of the local government, the cooperative farm, or the donors. Even members of local
governance institutions and of the WUA council itself sometimes lacked this awareness and a
clear understanding of the role of the WUA. This observation was also made by a comparative
study on WUAs in Kyrgyzstan, Nepal and India (DFID, Mott MacDonald 2005: S 2). This is a
result of the way the WUAs are established: The implementing agencies, due to project time
constraints, do not inform the farmers themselves but address the local government and other
village authorities and expect them to spread the information further to the farmers. Long
term community awareness raising programs in advance hardly exist. However, it also has to
be mentioned that in Kyrgyzstan awareness was higher than in Tajikistan, where local gover
nance institutions are informally closely interwoven with the FSK structures and farmers are
highly dependent on them.
So, while in theory WUAs are meant to be established independently from the official
administrative structures of the village and to involve all water users, in practice they mirror the
existing power structures. The fact that patrons and elders are heading local WUAs is ques
tionable from a democratic viewpoint. However, that does not have to be counterproductive
for water management. First, people tend to rather accept the advice of elders than of outside
experts. It also can be argued that powerful actors have to be involved in the council as they
have the authority to convince people on new rules. It might be even exactly the informal
power structures that make WIR work. Second, the leading persons in a village are the former
leaders of the FSK be it the director, the brigadier, or the leading agronomist. They know
the fields and the irrigation system very well. Therefore, it might be wise to include those who
have the status to educate people and convince them. Hence, there is a possible trade off be
tween empowerment and effectiveness objectives: Increased empowerment of water users may
reduce the implementation of WIR while reliance on un empowered farmers and established
power relations can enforce it in certain respects.
However, regardless whether participation is an end in itself (as it is in WUAs established
in community development projects), or whether it is only a means for water management (in
top down established WUAs), both approaches fall short in achieving real empowerment of
farmers. Reasons are on the one hand the project logic: Predefined and measurable outcomes
have to be achieved in a narrow defined timeframe. On the other hand it is a consequence of
the context in which the WUA is established. The local political culture is characterized by a
lack of proactiveness and an orientation towards the village leaders along with a personaliza
tion of organizations. Patronage is the central mode of politics. Historically, networks have
been mainly built along (factual or imagined) kinship ties. The sovkhozes and kolkhozes replaced
the former kinship based organization in many places only superficially. Independence and
privatization did not change it either. Again names have been changed and formal organiza
tions replaced, but personal affiliation, networks, and patronage as the fundamental modes of
distribution of resources remained. Little knowledge and awareness of the WUA reflects the
general situation where a majority of the village population is marginalized in local decision