Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 17 – Daghestan is
now so much an outlier from the rest of the Russian Federation on a whole range
of measures, participants at the Second Caucasus Civic Form held in Makhachkala
suggest, it has virtually become almost a foreign country -- even though it
remains at least nominally within Russian borders.
Maksim Shevchenko of the Presidential
Human Rights Council opened the meeting by observing that participants in this
second forum should remember that Vladimir Putin pays close attention to their
work. His call to return Daghestan to Russia’s common legal space echoed what the
first forum had declared (kavpolit.com/articles/kto_upravljaet_dagestanom-36845/).
Sergey Dokholyan, an economist at
the Daghestani Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, delivered
the most comprehensive address. He said that Daghestan’s economy after making
progress earlier had slipped back into decline, with the share of industry in the
republic’s economy only 11 percent of what it is for Russia as a whole.
His key point was that “Daghestan in
fact has been transformed into a foreign space inside the country which relies
on the financial resources of Russia but lives according to its own laws.” It
is “an outlier” even among the other republics of the North Caucasus in
economic terms, with small enterprises declining in number by 42 percent between
2011 and 2016.
The average pay in Daghestan is just
over have of the all-Russian figure, he continued; but the most troubling
aspect of the situation is that “by the most conservative estimates“ from 40 to
60 percent of economic activity in the republic is in the “shadow” sector. The
actual figure may be as high as 80 percent.
To the extent that is the case,
Dokholyan says, there are now two centers of power in Daghestan, the formal state
authorities and the real power which controls the shadow economy, people who
have “much greater weight and influence than the formal leaders of the region.”
Indeed, the imbalance is so great that one must ask “who rules the republic?”
The scholar added that “the economic
situation is close to a catastrophe because many processes are already
irreversible – a significant part of industry is already destroyed and the agro-industrial
complex is stagnant.” Investments are almost nil, and few business people have
incentives to try to change the situation.
Other speakers provided additional
details on all these points, noting that Daghestanis expect too much from the state
and don’t show initiative, that much of the money that should be going into the
hands of workers is being diverted, and that the authorities instead of facing
up to the facts are in denial and lie to the population.
“At present,” Magomedtagir Rizvanov, a KPRF member from
Buynaksk, said that “We now do not hear the truth from the authorities.” And so
the people have stopped listening to them, especially given that they no longer
elect their leaders but are compelled to put up with outsiders installed by
Moscow.
Zakir
Kaitov, a specialist on education, painted a picture of that sector which does
not promise improvement anytime soon. There are 348,000 children under the age
of seven but space for only just over half of them in the 805 pre-school
institutions, about half of which are substandard or even falling apart.
As
far as pupils are concerned, he said, there are 1451 schools in which 393,000 children
now study. Fewer than have correspond to standards, 581 of these schools remain
on doubt shift, and 27 have triple shifts.
And Aida Kasimov, a human rights activist, said that
conditions in her sector were horrific: the siloviki not only violate the
rights of Daghestanis but together with prosecutors and judges make it
impossible for lawyers to defend these rights.
Like the others, she called for the convention of a Congress of the People
of Daghestan to try to address all these issues.
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