Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 76

the same style as the FSK before and the changes can be considered to be superficial (new
name). In many cases, the farmers themselves are unaware of the reorganization. 84
An important aspect is that the land is not redistributed 'automatically' like in Kyrgyzs
tan but farmers have to apply for it, i.e. they have to become proactive themselves. Most of
the farmers do not know about the reform, their rights, nor how to apply for a land certificate.
Many even do not know what a dekhkan farm is. There is widespread 'legal illiteracy' among
farmers. If farmers know about application procedures, the next hindrance is the high cost of
the certificate. The official costs are 6 USD plus service charges (Presidential decree No. 600,
Annex 3, 12/30/2001). The actual costs are considerably higher, they are indicated with up to
300 US Dollar with an average of about 50 USD (AAH 2003: 19f). 85 There are also cases
where applications are refused, applicants are discouraged by local officials or whole sovkhozes
or kolkhozes are declared as seed production or livestock breeding farms to prevent the estab
lishment of independent DFs. One precondition to establish an independent farm is that the
farmers become active and have access to information on their legal rights. These are tre
mendous obstacles, besides the need to have financial means to pay the official and unofficial
costs of registration at their disposal and often they also have to have good personal rela
tions with the local authorities. Hence, influential and wealthy persons are in a better position
be it to become an independent farmer or to stay in the position of a director (AAH 2003: 21;
Dethier 2003: 33f).
During the Soviet Union, the case study village Iskodar in Aini Raion was part of a kolk
hoz which consisted of six villages. Now the village of Iskodar forms a single separate collective
DF, called “Hasan Karamov” and is part of the Dar Dar Jamoat. As far as reported, nobody
has exercised his right to separate from the DF to begin working as an independent farmer.
People stated that the costs would be too high for the small piece of land they received: To
“buy” the certificate would cost about 150 somoni (about 45 euro). The DF in practice works
like the kolkhoz before and is still the primary organization in the village. The brigadier (this
function also still exists) collects 30% of the market price of the harvest as the members' con
tribution to taxes, staff, and administration. Some villagers said that farmers have to give up to
60% of their harvest to the collective DF.
In addition, one has to take into account that workers on collective DFs usually receive a
a very small alary (less than 10 USD per year) or no salary at all. Besides the lack of alterna
tives, the main reason why people still work on the collective farms is because they provide
(like the FSKs before) families with garden plots ( ogorod ). Subsistence production makes up a
considerable part of the whole agrarian production and is often carried out by women whose
husbands work in the cities or abroad. 86 Experts therefore speak of a “feminization of agricul
tural labor force” (AAH 2003: 17). The local economy mainly survives thanks to barter trade
and revenues from migrant workers employed in Russia and other CIS countries. Also in Isko
dar, the DF does not, like the FSK used to do before, pay its members a regular salary; the
farmers earn a living only with their harvest. The majority of the village population can be
considered very poor. In 2004, the UN distributed flour and oil to the most vulnerable fami
lies. Due to land scarcity and the lack of alternatives for income generation, many young men
84 In the above-mentioned AAH survey (see Fn 82), 64.3% of all interviewed households of the dekhkan farm workers
thought that they still worked at the FSK.
85 Informal conversation with a representative of an INGO, Dushanbe, 10/31/2005.
86 According to IOM, since 2000 about 632,000 men from Tajikistan have been working as migrant workers abroad
(mainly Russia or other CIS countries). They make up almost 10% of the whole population (AAH 2003: 17).