One Central Asian in Six Lives in a Village Not Having Basic Infrastructure or Linked to Outside World by Good Roads

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 23 – Among the many divides that exist in Central Asian countries perhaps the most important is between the majority of the populations which lives in cities and villages well-connected with one another and the minority which lives in villages that lack basic infrastructure and are not linked to the outside world by good highways.

            Approximately 15 percent of the population of the region – 8.7 million people -- as a whole falls in the latter category, with the highest share of residents in this category being Tajikistan where owing to the mountainous topography, that figure rises to 20 percent of the total (bugin.info/detail/tupikovye-derevni-tsentral/ru).

            The people living in these isolated villages have limited access to education, medical treatment and markets and often are economically and socially marginalized, left behind the urban populations of these countries and following a very different way of life with very different social influences, including ethnic traditions and Islam.

            According to UNICEF, in 2020, a quarter of all rural schools in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan did not have access to drinking water, and 30 percent did not have indoor toilets. And while there were five doctors in Tajikistan for every 10,000 urban residents in that country, in rural areas, there was only one. As a result, life expectancy was five to seven years lower.

            The arid climate of the region and the wild swings in temperature from summer to winter means that villagers are especially at risk of crop failures and hunger, with these threats increasing rather than falling away as a result of the impact of global warming, the Bugun news agency says.

            It continues: “cultural and religious traditions play a significant role in the life of dead-end villages,” with patriarchal values playing a far greater role in them than in the urban centers of these five countries and village women kept from participating fully in the work force and forced to live much as they did long ago.

            If the governments of these regions do not do more to integrate the villages into national life, each of the countries in Central Asia will be divided between a modern urban center and a traditionalist rural one, something that could be exploited by radicals to prevent progress and modernization.