Rural
Development in Cambodia:
The View from the Village
Judy L.
Ledgerwood
She has three children, two girls and a baby boy. Their life
has been getting better, she says. They saved enough to buy
a bit more land, so now they have just over two hectares.
They have paid for their house plot and hope to save enough
over the next two years to buy a raised wooden house. The
thatch hut they live in now floods with the rains.
Life has been better since the 1993 elections because they
have since stopped coming to coerce men into being soldiers.
Her husband became a policeman to avoid the draft. This arrangement
costs three chi of gold (about $150), but it worked only for
about a year. "Why?" I asked. Because there were
two bosses and only one received the money. The other had
not, and so they fought. Her brothers are educated. She is
the only one in the family who is illiterate. Her brother
earned his Bac Dup (baccalaureate). Her relatives took him
to Phnom Penh to try to attain a position in the bureaucracy,
but it was far too expensive. It takes $3,500 to $4,000 to
buy one's way in. Her mother sold part of her rice fields
to pay, but the deal did not go through. So he has no position.
Now her other brother, the young man who sits behind her (she
pats his knee), has to pay to pass his exams for the eighth
grade. They are worried that they will not have enough money
to pay the bribes.
They are worried now, because of what they hear on the radio:
FUNCINPEC accuses Hun Sen of this, Hun Sen accuses FUNCINPEC
of that. They don't want to go back to war. They don't want
the men to be taken away again. I try out my theory that the
rich are so rich now that they will not be willing to live
without the aid money, without the investment money. They
stare at me unconvinced. "What do you know?" their
expressions seem to say. What do I know? They have decided
to keep more rice this year, to sell less, just in case. Rice
stocks might see them through turmoil ahead. As we talk, she
pulls the string that rocks a fat little baby boy in the hammock.1
Introduction
In most discussions of Cambodian political and economic development,
the vast peasant majority, living at subsistence level, is
generally invisible and silent. While "the people"
are frequently noted in the Khmer press as supporting certain
politicians or parties, very little has been written about
life in rural Cambodia, and scant data are available for making
policy decisions.
This chapter begins with three basic premises: First the vast
majority of the Cambodian population lives in poverty in rural
areas; second spending for economic development and assistance
programs is unduly focused on the capital, Phnom Penh; and
third, while rural development is touted as critical, the
rural context and dynamics of rural development in Cambodia
are inadequately understood. Given these facts the chapter
addresses three topics. The first section reviews the scant
data available about the lives of rural peasants based on
recent research. The second and third address a number of
the issues and debates that underpin efforts (or the lack
thereof) to promote rural development in Cambodia. The final
section makes preliminary suggestions for strengthening research
on and the design of rural assistance programs in the Khmer
countryside.
Rural Cambodia
Eighty-five percent of Cambodia's population lives in rural
villages. Most of these people are rice farmers who practice
one form or another of subsistence agriculture. Over 85 percent
of the land under cultivation is in lowland rain-fed rice
fields that produce an average of only 1.3 tons per hectare;
average rice production per hectare is much higher in neighboring
countries--over two tons in Thailand and over three tons in
Vietnam. Food consumption is estimated at 260 to 290 kilograms
of paddy per inhabitant per year, but in many areas with low
soil fertility and high population pressure, farmers are unable
to produce at these levels. Since 1990 harvest levels have
been dramatically affected by drought and floods, particularly
in 1991, 1994, 1995, and again in 1996. In 1997 flooding occurred
again, particularly hard hit were Kompong Thom and Siem Reap
provinces.
Land Ownership
Before 1975 land was privately owned. Land-holdings varied
in size around the country, with an average of 2.2 hectares
reported in 1961. Certain regions, most notably the northwestern
province of Battambang, had areas of much larger holdings;
but according to the 1956 Cambodian census, 55 percent of
landowners had less than one hectare. In the village in Kandal
Province where May Ebihara conducted research in 1959-60,
42 percent of the villagers owned less than one hectare of
land, with most of the rest holding between one and two hectares.
Under the ravages of the Khmer Rouge during the Democratic
Kampuchea (DK) period (1975-79), all agricultural lands were
collectivized. The population was organized by age and sex
into work teams that labored long hours at agricultural production
and at the construction of a vast network of irrigation canals.
During the course of the regime 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians
died of exhaustion, malnutrition, disease, or were executed.
Cambodian farmers' most bitter complaints about these times
concerned rampant violence and the lack of food. They say
they produced as much or more rice than they had before but
were not allowed control over the product of their labors.
While they starved the rice was taken away on trucks to feed
soldiers and cadres or to be exported.
After 1979, with the establishment of the People's Republic
of Kampuchea (PRK), a system of agricultural collectives known
as Krom Samaki, or solidarity groups, was formed. Krom Samaki
were composed of 10 to 15 families each. Each family was allocated
a small plot for its home, while all other land was held as
the property of the state. There were three official levels
of collectivization, though there seems to have been greater
variation from place to place. Level-one groups farmed as
a collective and distributed the crop according to the number
of persons in each family, with able-bodied workers receiving
a greater share. Level-two groups divided up land and equipment
among families (though all land was still owned by the state),
but tasks such as transplanting and harvesting were performed
by the group. Level three was essentially farming of private
plots but with labor exchange among members of the group.
The Krom Samaki were extremely unpopular and were eventually
discontinued. Though they continued to exist on paper throughout
the decade, most areas had quietly returned to farming private
plots by the mid-1980s--though with formal state ownership
of property.
In spring 1989, with the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops at
hand and negotiations under way for a settlement to Cambodia's
civil war, the PRK announced a return to private ownership
of property. In the land redistributions that followed, farmers
were allocated between 0.1 and 0.2 hectares per family member,
which meant land holdings ranging from 0.5 to 2 hectares per
household. Holdings were divided based on residence in the
village and land farmed since 1979 rather than any prerevolutionary
claims to land. In some areas this distribution was conducted
unfairly; local village, subdistrict, and district leaders
received more and better quality land than other villagers.
In the village where Ebihara conducted research in 1959-60
and again in the early 1990s there was evidence that considerable
care was taken in how the allocation of land was made.2
Since land was of variable quality, located at varying distances
from water sources and so on, it was divided into small parcels
so that individuals could have some good land and some of
lesser quality. In this village landholdings are smaller today
with an average of 0.68 hectare, as opposed to 0.88 hectare
in 1960. In 1992, 79 percent of the villagers owned less than
one hectare.3
It is also important to note that while the land distributions
formally began in 1989, many farmers still did not have deeds
to their property in 1996. In the 1993 election campaign,
the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the party of the old PRK
government, ran on a platform that promised farmers titles
to the lands they farmed. The CPP alleged that other parties
would try to return lands to their pre-1975 owners. During
1992 and early 1993 cadastral offices around the country worked
furiously to give farmers deeds to their lands to assure CPP
votes in the elections. Yet many farmers still have only a
piece of paper declaring that they have filed claim to a certain
piece of land, not the final documentation verifying that
such a claim has been approved.
Rural Communities Today
The first Socioeconomic Survey of Cambodia (1993-94) of the
Ministry of Planning includes statistical data on rural households
for the first time since 1962. But the survey provides only
a hazy image of life in rural areas. The average household
size in rural Cambodia is 5.4 people. An average of 20 percent
of households are headed by women. There are 88 men for every
100 women, a gender ratio more skewed than in urban areas.
Thirty-one percent of rural residents have completed less
than one year of formal schooling. Eighty-two percent of rural
households have no toilet. Ninety-six percent cook with firewood;
less than one percent have electricity for lighting. Twenty-one
percent have a radio, and nearly 6 percent have a television
(this is higher than those houses having access to electricity
because the televisions are battery powered). The percentage
of household expenditures on food, beverages, and tobacco
in rural areas was estimated to be 67 percent of the monthly
total. Household income in rural areas is estimated to be
less than a third of the average urban household income.
With regard to social organization at the village level, we
know first that Khmer villages are highly variable. While
the work of Éveline Porée-Maspero and others
documented a high degree of social and cultural variability
throughout Cambodia before independence, it is certainly even
higher today. Some communities, particularly those in the
central and southern plains, are made up primarily of the
original residents who returned home after the forced population
shifts during the period of Democratic Kampuchea. In other
areas many residents remained throughout the DK years, but
district leadership has been brought in from other areas.
Elsewhere in the country, particularly where there has been
fighting during the last 10 years, villages are made up of
people who have fled other areas, who were brought into the
area as soldiers of whatever political faction, who returned
from the refugee camps in Thailand, and so on. Obviously the
sense of community in such areas is much less well formed
than that in the central plains villages, where people have
lived in relative peace since 1979.
Second, we know that with the return to private property and
the land redistribution of the late 1980s, differences in
wealth are reemerging. In the Kandal Province village where
Ebihara and I conducted research, this differentiation is
not yet as marked as it was before the revolution. Ebihara
notes that there were no socioeconomic classes within the
village when she conducted her original research in 1959-60,
but villagers recognized relative degrees of wealth among
families based primarily on the size and number of rice fields
owned. She reports that in prewar periods there were more
relatively wealthy people than those who were destitute. Today
many are considered to "have enough" (neak kuasom),
meaning that they have enough rice to eat and possibly some
surplus to sell, and there are fewer people in the top or
bottom categories.4 Those said to be "poor"
(kra) include elderly people without able-bodied labor, female-headed
households without male labor, and families struck by serious
illnesses that incurred high medical expenses and loss of
labor.
In some areas close to Phnom Penh a different phenomenon is
occurring. Land speculators are buying up large tracts, anticipating
the growth of the city. At the same time rising housing costs
in the city center are resulting in urban sprawl, as the new
poor occupy lands on the flood plain surrounding Phnom Penh,
often as squatters. In areas where land has higher value,
on the edges of urban centers and along the Mekong and Bassac
rivers, numerous conflicts over land ownership have arisen.
Most of the cases registered to the United Nations Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) Human Rights Office in 1992-93
were cases related to land ownership. A common pattern during
this period was for armed soldiers to appropriate at gunpoint
tracts of land that were then divided into plots and sold
to new migrants. Previous landowners were left with little
or no recourse as local-level officials are unwilling or unable
to stand up to armed force.
Third, we know that in some areas labor exchange (provas dai)
and other forms of community cooperation are reverting to
prerevolutionary patterns. At the same time agricultural production
in other areas is characterized by cash payments for agricultural
labor. This is the case in the Angkor Borei district, where
farmers grow dry-season rice. Because the peak labor period
is virtually the same for all farmers, there is neither time
nor adequate labor to practice traditional exchange patterns.
Hence farmers in this region hire large numbers of laborers,
often from other districts.
Fourth, we know that some rural communities have taken it
upon themselves to organize local nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) to encourage cooperative community activities, such
as organizing ritual activity or working a communal field.
Local NGOs that work at the community level are only beginning
to establish themselves and become known to international
organizations and possible donors.
The Urban-Rural Disparity in Development Assistance
While Cambodia's GDP grew at an average 5.9 percent from 1990
to 1995, these data include 20 percent growth in the urban
and hotel sector and 15. 2 percent in construction. The rural
sector in the same period was stagnant as rice production
grew at -0.1 percent and livestock at 3.8 percent. Since the
July 1997 coup d'état Ministry of Finance officials
have revised estimates of economic growth for 1997 from 6.5
percent to 3 percent or less.
There is a similar pattern to the distribution of aid resources.
Indeed most aid money, like most of the millions that poured
into Cambodia during UNTAC, remains in Phnom Penh. Of the
estimated $2 billion in total economic and financial assistance
received from the international community between 1993 and
1996, the majority of funds did not leave the capital. This
was obvious to an elderly woman in rural Kompong Speu Province,
who in December 1995 asked me, "Why do you foreigners
only give money to Phnom Penh?"
Examples from two areas, health and education, help to show
the trends. The Ministry of Health received 6 percent of the
national budget in 1994 and 8 percent in 1996. Donor assistance
for health committed to date, however, focused on urban areas
and on specific provinces. Phnom Penh, with 7 percent of the
population, received 43 percent of the 1994 total donor aid
for health and over 70 percent of the assistance for capital
investment in the health sector, including construction of
hospitals. At the provincial level aid was concentrated in
three provinces: Kandal (where Phnom Penh is located), Battambang,
and Banteay Meanchey (the provinces with the highest numbers
of repatriated refugees). The central lowland provinces, home
to more than two-thirds of the population, received only 21
percent of the aid.5
These efforts at the central level are arguably necessary
before projects can be designed to reach rural areas. But
the harsh reality remains that in most rural areas health
care is nonexistent. The current medical system in Cambodia
is renowned for being particularly profit oriented.6
Though health care is theoretically provided by the state,
in practice, no one is treated without cash payment in advance.
Babies are delivered at home by traditional midwives. Maternal
mortality rates were estimated at 600 per 100,000 live births
in 1993; comparable statistics for Thailand in 1992 were 137
maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Premature delivery
and delivery complications cause about two-thirds of infant
mortality. Nearly one-fifth of the children do not survive
to age five. Where health care is available at the district
level, it is often priced well beyond the means of the average
farmer. Virtually everyone in rural Cambodia self-medicates
with medicines available for purchase in the local markets.
Post-coup cuts in foreign assistance will worsen the health
situation. The Ministry of Health reports that the cut in
German aid will diminish the national pharmaceutical budget
by approximately a third. This poses particular problems for
the treatment of tuberculosis and malaria.
Government spending on education, about 7 percent of the budget
in 1994, was up to 12 percent of the budget for 1996. In 1994
international NGOs funded about 48 percent of the total foreign
aid to education, multilateral organizations about 35 percent,
and bilateral donors about 17 percent. As is the case with
the health sector most of this assistance was focused on Phnom
Penh. Over 40 percent of this aid was absorbed by higher education.
This means that not only is the aid restricted to Phnom Penh,
where the institutions of higher education are located, but
it is further focused on the male children of the wealthy
elite, who can afford higher education for their offspring.
In 1993-94 only 15 percent of the student body at the University
of Phnom Penh were women. Women constituted 12.6 percent of
the students at the Royal University of Fine Arts, 12.6 percent
of the medical school, 5.5 percent of the law school, 4.6
percent of the Agricultural Institute, and only 1.5 percent
at the Institute of Technology.7 While a decade ago it was possible for
intelligent poor children to make it to university under a
quota system established by the socialist government, this
is no longer the case. Since the early 1990s admission and
advancement at all of the institutes of higher learning are
contingent on families paying informal fees to education officials.
Approximately 40 percent of the funding is directed to the
primary level, which is the only level available in most rural
areas. The typical primary school in a rural area serves two
to three villages, and there is an average of only three secondary
schools per district. Even more striking considering the problems
of education in rural areas is the rate at which children
drop out of school. Only 400 out of every 1,000 students who
begin first grade complete all five years of primary school,
and only 320 actually graduate. According to an Asian Development
Bank (ADB) study, "approximately 80 persist to the end
of lower secondary school and 60 to the end of upper secondary
school."8 The education system suffers
from a wide range of problems, including lack of facilities,
undertrained staff, lack of books and materials, low pay for
teachers, and an ineffective curriculum.
Education is also priced beyond the means of many farmers.
On the basis of a household survey the ADB concluded that
"the government spends an average of 20,000 riels ($8)
per primary student each year, while parents paid an average
of 160,000 riels ($64), or eight times that amount."9
Since teachers are not paid a living wage by the state, they
must supplement their meager income by charging students additional
fees to attend.
The government expenditures for agriculture in 1996 were only
4 percent of the total budget. Much of the aid for agriculture
since 1993 has been in the form of funds for mine clearance
and rural road rebuilding. Many of these projects were in
areas of northwestern Cambodia where most of the repatriated
refugees settled when they returned from the border camps.
A vast gap exists between central government ministry planning
and activities and farmers' lives. Agricultural extension
agents are trained but not deployed to rural areas. Government
officials act in those areas where NGO or other aid funds
are being expended but not in a generalized fashion. The new
Ministry of Rural Development has plans for local-level representation
and activities but has yet to establish local connections.
It is difficult to say what impact the July coup will have
on the plans of the Ministry of Rural Development and the
Ministry of Education. The ministers from both were from FUNCINPEC
and fled the country after the coup. They were replaced by
two defectors from FUNCINPEC. The use of these positions as
political payoffs does not bode well for any serious action
being taken by these ministries for some time.
Except at particular development project sites there is virtually
no connection between the ministries at the central level
and rural residents. After the 1993 election of the coalition
government, central ministries and provincial administrations
were divided between the CPP and FUNCINPEC. But from the district
level down no change has taken place. So today's district,
subdistrict, and village leaders are the same ones from the
PRK and State of Cambodia (SOC) period. Because of the conflicts
and divisions between political parties and ministries at
the central level of government along with those between personalities
in ministries and at the provincial level, local-level rulers
are left to rely primarily on their personal (mostly pre-1993)
connections up the chain of command--or to run matters themselves.
Local elections scheduled for 1997 were canceled. Without
any power sharing at the local level FUNCINPEC was reluctant
to devolve control over, or funding for, development projects
to the local level. There was a similar reluctance from within
the CPP, since government structures throughout the PRK period
were organized with power emanating from the central level.
After the coup it is even more likely that the emphasis will
be on top-down administration and maintaining political and
economic control. In the short to medium term, there is virtually
no chance that the focus will shift to allowing local level
input on rural development projects.
Before the coup the need to grant project funding to rural
areas was generally acknowledged, and planning for future
socioeconomic development stated that this should be the case.
Early in 1997 the National Assembly passed the First Socioeconomic
Development Plan, 1996-2000, which focuses on rural development
and poverty alleviation programs. The plan's goals for public
investment, which will cost some $5 billion--almost three-quarters
of which is expected to be financed from foreign sources--state
that roughly 60 percent of the public investment needs to
be allocated to rural areas. While this is an admirable goal,
given the current political situation and cuts in international
aid, there seems little chance that these plans will be carried
out quickly, if at all.
Problems for Rural Development Planning and Implementation
The problems with designing effective rural development initiatives
in Cambodia are complicated by the upheavals of the last 25
years. A 1995 ADB planning document listed some of the constraints
on agricultural and rural development as follows:
shortages of key inputs (water control, fertilizer, improved
seed, credit, and transport); inaccessibility [due to] very
poor rural infrastructure, including roads and communications,
and a limited domestic market; insecurity, banditry, and land
mines in several areas; a limited technical capacity in government
departments, with a poor data base, ineffective research facilities
and virtually no extension service; a skill base among the
rural population limited largely to traditional subsistence
practices, and with low literacy and numeracy levels; and
a disinclination toward community or group action, aggravated
by the memories of experience under the Khmer Rouge regime.10
This section addresses three of these concerns: the lack of
available data on rural communities, the issue of correctly
analyzing social relations with respect to organizing community
development (often addressed in the development literature
as a "lack of absorptive capacity"), and people's
alleged lack of motivation to participate in development schemes.
In the first instance the problem is very real; in the case
of the latter, the Khmer context is little understood and
the problems are overstated in the current literature.
Lack of Data
Written materials on rural village life in Cambodia before
the upheavals of the last 25 years are scant. Far more research
was conducted by Westerners, particularly French scholars,
on the archaeological wonders of Angkor Wat and early Khmer
history than on contemporary society. Most materials written
in Khmer or French about prewar Khmer society that were stored
in the country were destroyed during the years of war and
revolution. Libraries hold only a fraction of the Khmer-language
materials published before 1975, and ministries lack documentation
of baseline data in their particular fields. Information exists
as fragments, often only as oral knowledge.
The picture of rural life, as viewed from the city, is also
skewed by the ongoing security concerns of the last 25 years.
Before 1970 some Khmer traveled widely across the country
to visit relatives in the provinces where their ancestors
had been born, especially at the New Year and at Pchum Ben
(the Festival for the Dead). During the civil war between
Lon Nol's government forces and the Khmer Rouge insurgency
from 1970 to 1975, large numbers of people fled rural areas
to the cities to escape fighting. During the Pol Pot regime
people were forcibly relocated throughout the country, mostly
but not exclusively from urban centers to rural areas. People
returned to the cities after Democratic Kampuchea fell, but
given that many former urban dwellers had perished or fled
abroad, most residents of Phnom Penh after 1979 were born
in rural areas. Between 1979 and 1989 the movements of Cambodians
were restricted, and many people who moved to urban areas
did not subsequently travel extensively in the countryside--except
for young men in the military--because it was widely believed
to be too dangerous. While the perception of this danger changes
over time with reference to particular geographical areas,
it is my impression that, in general, urban Khmer today have
far less firsthand knowledge of rural life. This began to
change again in 1989 as NGOs started to undertake community
development work at the village level, most employing urban
Khmer staff for such projects.
Statistical information used by the government for policy-making,
including census data, agricultural production levels, and
reports of economic activities, usually originates at the
district level. However, these statistics are often extremely
unreliable and may be further distorted as they are consolidated
further up the information chain to the central level.
After 1989 it became easier for foreigners to travel to rural
areas, and in the early 1990s NGOs were permitted to hire
Khmer staff. Consequently a series of small-scale studies
were produced on subjects ranging from the state of rural
hospitals to the problems of returnees. Other reports have
focused on specific issues, from rural credit to education.
These studies tend to be highly localized, focusing on only
one or a few communities, and their conclusions are based
on research conducted over a very short period, such as a
few weeks or at most, a few months. They give us some snapshot
images of life in particular places at particular moments,
but it remains extremely difficult to extrapolate from these
reports generalizations about Khmer social and economic relations
in rural areas.11
The Debate over Village-Level Social Relations
The issue of the current status of village-level social relations
has important implications for Cambodian and international
efforts to promote development at the community level. This
issue was raised in a paper presented at the July 1996 meeting
of the International Consultative Group on Cambodia. It states:
The NGO Working Group on Community Development underscores
as issues the lack of community cohesion and organization,
the lack of participation of people in the development process,
the inability of people to access resources and develop skills,
the lack of cooperation among NGO, government, and local community
groups, the lack of donor interest in long-term community
development work, and the lack of security conditions necessary
to ensure development.12
The reference to a "lack of community cohesion"
reflects the widely held view that Khmer society has been
significantly altered by the events of the last 20 years.13
Society is seen as having become atomized; people are said
to be willing to provide a smaller range of types of assistance
and only to a limited group of people. John Vijghen has discussed
this shrinking circle of relatives (bong-p'oun) and asserts
that needy kin are often just given food so that they will
not starve, but they are not given equipment, land to farm,
or investment capital.14
Viviane Frings pursues this argument a step further, arguing
that Khmer do not really care about each other any more, that
they "have not learned anything from the socialist propaganda
and organization." She writes:
when
Cambodians do help, they always try to take some advantage
out of it, even if the persons they help are their relatives.
They do not help for free and do not think that they have
a moral obligation to do it. They expect the persons they
help to be grateful to them whatever the conditions of the
help.15
Mutual aid, according to Frings, has become associated with
forms of collective organization imposed by the state. She
goes on to state that since there were no collective organizations
at the village level in prerevolutionary Cambodia, Khmer peasants
have not changed but rather returned to prerevolutionary patterns
of not helping each other.
This school of thought, characterized by the work of Frings
and often repeated by development workers in Cambodia, is
carried to extremes in a recent study by Jan Ovesen and others
entitled, When Every Household Is an Island.16
Asserting essentially that the village is nothing more than
a collection of houses, the authors conclude that these clusters
do not constitute a socially or culturally significant entity,
let alone a moral community. They write:
The
common picture is that the traditional social cohesion and
self-help mechanisms in the villages that were destroyed
under Pol Pot are now slowly returning to normal. There
is an element of wishful thinking in this view, for it is
questionable whether such a "normal," traditional
social cohesion on the village level ever existed in the
first place. It is less questionable, however, that the
deterioration of social solidarity appears to be continuing
still, and that it is reinforced by the liberalization of
the economy and the consequent monetarization of most social
relations beyond the nuclear family.17
This view of Khmer society is very seriously mistaken. Based
on research conducted by Ebihara and myself, data collected
in the village in which she first conducted research 30 years
ago and revisited several times in the early 1990s, suggest
that intravillage cooperation is still very much alive.18
The bonds within a village are not those of artificially created
"solidarity groups" but bonds of kinship. The only
way to understand the connections that bind the residents
of a village is to trace their bilateral kinship linkages
(through both the husband's and wife's sides of the family)
by birth and by marriage over several generations. Since Ebihara
specifically focused on kinship relations and social organization
in her original research, she is now able to trace these ties
through three generations to understand the connections of
each household to another.
Most of the inhabitants of this village returned to their
native place after the upheavals of the Democratic Kampuchea
period. Thus many have known each other since birth and are
related to one another in some way, by blood or marriage.
Most of the households in the village are connected not only
by kinship but also by long-term friendships, with the complex
reciprocal obligations that such relationships bring. They
demonstrate a kind of tolerance for one another's personalities
and habits that is found only in people who know each other
well. Other communities, however, may be composed of those
without such long-standing bonds.
It is true that the extreme violence and deprivation of the
DK period made people watch out for themselves. But there
is ample evidence from the village where we conducted research
that people still help one another in a variety of ways, including
sharing food, donating or lending cash, exchanging labor,
providing emergency financial and other assistance, and giving
psychological support. The social circles in which assistance
is provided may have shrunk, but Ebihara and I interpret this
as owing largely to villagers' limited resources--i.e., their
restricted capacity to give money and land to others--rather
than to a lack of concern for their neighbors. While limited
material resources may reduce the number of people or the
size of the circle of bong-p'oun that people might be able
to help, our research indicates that Khmer "traditional"
systems of mutual assistance and monitoring behavior are still
active in this community.
Moreover the notion that the Krom Samaki agricultural collectives
represented some kind of "real" community whose
passing is to be mourned is not an attitude commonly expressed
in Khmer rural communities. Quite to the contrary villagers,
even the widows and other female heads of households whom
the kroms were designed to help, consistently expressed a
preference for a return to private ownership of property.
Contrary to the atomization school of thought, Khmer rural
villages are interwoven communities capable of organizing
for socioeconomic development programs. There is, however,
a range of types of villages in different parts of the country,
depending to a large extent on whether or not they reconstituted
themselves with much the same prewar population after the
upheavals of the DK period. I return to this point below.
Questions of Motivation
The issue of what constitutes a village is directly related
to the common assumption among aid workers in Cambodia today
that villagers will engage in development-project work only
if they are paid. This is sometimes referred to as the "food-for-work"
phenomenon. Since the World Food Program, Oxfam, and other
agencies over the last decade or so have offered villagers
food as payment for working on development projects, rural
villagers are now said to balk at the notion of undertaking
project labor without compensation.
That people won't want to work unless they receive some benefit
in return is not a shocking concept. Gabrielle Martel's account
of life in a village in Siem Reap Province in the 1960s includes
two stories about the ability of villagers to organize for
community labor. In the first case government officials ordered
villagers to provide labor to repair a roadway. The roadway
did not service their village, and they had nothing to gain
from the project. The villagers sent a token group representing
the village so as to appear to participate in the construction,
while in reality doing as little work as possible. On the
other hand Martel notes that when flood waters washed out
a bridge that everyone used regularly to go to market, the
villagers immediately organized a work group and repaired
it.19
That thousands of rural communities all over Cambodia are
in the process of organizing their meager resources and labor
to rebuild Buddhist temples speaks volumes as to the villagers'
abilities to accomplish goals they articulate themselves.
By reconstructing temples, they are rebuilding the hearts
of their communities and at the same time gaining Buddhist
merit for this life and the next.
Much of this discussion about a lack of motivation on the
part of villagers all too closely echoes French colonial visions
of Khmer as indolent. If one is a firm believer in the intelligence
of the common farmer, the logical explanation is that a refusal
to participate is likely linked to a lack of interest on the
villagers' part, a clear sign that the project was designed
without the input or approval of the local population. It
likely also reflects the villagers' belief that the only ones
to benefit from such a program will be corrupt officials.
It is certainly not always easy to establish clearly what
it is that communities want for themselves, or to motivate
participation in development projects when farmers are already
overworked and short of hours in the day. But it is also too
easy to abandon this difficult task by saying either that
there is in fact no community to serve or that people are
unwilling to help themselves.
Conclusion
Given these problems the uncertainties of post-coup politics
and the limited data that planners have as a base for designing
national rural development policies, is it possible to make
any statement about remedies? At present this may only be
done in the most general terms.
First, some social development programs are best left entirely
to the national government, and aid programs should directly
fund the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) for these tasks.
The most important areas are health and education. The Ministry
of Health has strengthened its organizational structure and
planning capabilities at the central level and has as its
stated goal improving care at the district level, making it
more available and affordable. For both the Ministry of Health
and the Ministry of Education a key factor lies in their ability
to pay a living wage to teachers and local health-care providers.
Their services can be afforded by rural residents only if
their cost is subsidized by the state in the form of adequate
salaries.
Aid programs that provide funding for health, education, or
agricultural services should not be cut. Cutting such funding
does not hurt the Hun Sen government; it hurts poor Cambodians.
The U.S. decision not to cut support for maternal and child
health programs is a positive case in point.
Second, there is a clear need for more local-level research
in conjunction with planning for development programs. Since
rural villages vary greatly in terms of specific conditions,
it is only logical that something that works in one area may
not work in another. Before plans can be drafted for a particular
area, research should be done in the region to try to understand
community composition and characteristics.
Such research should be carried out by local researchers,
who are most likely to be able to rapidly assess the social
characteristics of the community. Therefore more training
of Khmer social science researchers is urgently required.
Support should be offered to organizations that train Khmer
staff to conduct research programs for development. To date
these include the Cambodian Researchers for Development, the
Khmer Women's Voice Center, the Cambodian Development Resource
Institute, and the UN Fund for Population Activities' work
in conjunction with the Ministry of Planning to train interviewers
for the 1998 census. Funding should also be made available
for a limited number of Khmer to undertake graduate training
abroad.
Other ideas to be considered would include linking higher
education to requirements that young people provide a set
number of years of service in rural areas after they finish
their studies: as teachers, as health workers, and as agricultural
extension agents. One way to facilitate this process would
be to require that institutions of higher education recruit
students based on a quota system, so that different areas
of the country are represented. Graduates could then be required
to return to their native areas to perform their years of
service.
Certain other social development programs are best left to
local organization and control. The best examples of these
are the projects of small-scale local NGOs. While it is often
difficult for international donors to identify successful
local organizations, it is not impossible. Some international
donors are already channeling funds to local NGOs, either
directly or through international NGOs acting as intermediaries.
Two other endeavors are under way that merit further study
for possible use as models striving to attain in form and
content true community-based development. The first is the
RGC's program called the Social Fund. Under this program local
communities present projects they have designed themselves
to funding agency representatives for approval. Social Fund
program staff visit the sites and assess the viability of
the projects, and a committee then decides on funding approval.
Follow-up visits confirm that project work proceeds and that
appropriate assessment is made at project's end.
A second program, funded by the UN Development Program, is
a pilot project called Seila. In five provinces Seila strives
to combine local participation and decision making with national-level
policy-making. Development committees are elected at the village,
subdistrict, district, and provincial levels. Province- and
district-level committees are provided funding to allocate
to worthy projects that are proposed from the bottom up. The
idea is that if local-level committees express the opinions
of their communities then development will be truly participatory.
Each committee also has a number of slots reserved for women,
thus assuring female participation in the decision-making
process at every level.20
It is still too early to assess the success of these projects.
While they sound ideal there is a strong likelihood that the
newly created structures will immediately come to mirror the
established patron-client structures that dominate Khmer political
life. It is certainly simplistic to assume that forming a
new committee through elections will automatically create
a nonbiased and representative body. Local-level officials
(almost all of whom are members of the CPP), their position
strengthened by the July coup, are likely to resist strongly
any activities that seem to threaten their exclusive authority.
The crisis at the national level means that the need to shift
funding, focus, and control to rural communities will remain
unaddressed into the foreseeable future. There seems little
chance that central-level officials will concentrate their
energies on Cambodia's rural communities, except in order
to exert additional political control. It seems likely that
community-based rural development programs will remain largely
on hold.
In the face of the political upheavals of 1997 rural Cambodians
are again hoarding rice, saving their money, and waiting for
the storm to pass. Peasants interviewed in June and July 1997
did not express support for either political party; rather
there seemed to be widespread resignation. Many people commented
that widespread violence and political oppression were "normal"
(thommada). Some dared to express a certain level of anger
that their leaders continue to fight over power and will not
let the people live in peace. Some quoted the Khmer proverb
that says: "When elephants fight, it is the ants that
get trampled."
Still the rebuilding of temples by communities all over Cambodia
tells us that Khmer villages are capable of organizing for
their own benefit. Cambodians, like most people, are cooperative
when it is to their benefit. Rather than overidealizing an
imposed form of collectivity from the recent past, development
planners should focus on understanding the varying range of
patterns of social organization in contemporary villages and
tailor their efforts according to those specific conditions.
Such specialized planning and program design is necessary
if government funding and foreign development aid is to begin
to reach beyond Phnom Penh to the 85 percent of Cambodians
who live in rural villages.
Notes
1. Field notes, June 26, 1997, Takeo Province.
2. May M. Ebihara, "A Khmer Village in
Cambodia" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1968), p.
221; "Beyond Suffering: The Recent History of a Cambodian
Village," in The Challenge of Reform in Indochina, ed.
Borje Ljunggren (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International
Development), pp. 149-166; and "A Cambodian Village Under
the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979," in Genocide and Democracy
in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations, and the
International Community, ed. Ben Kiernan (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Southeast Asia Studies), pp. 51-63.
3. Judy L. Ledgerwood, Analysis of the Situation
of Women in Cambodia (Bangkok: UNICEF, 1992), p. 47.
4. May M. Ebihara, "'Beyond Suffering':
The Recent History of a Cambodian Village," in The Challenge
of Reform in Indochina, ed. Borje Ljunggren (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1993). See also May M. Ebihara and
Judy L. Ledgerwood, "Economic Transformations and Gender
in a Cambodian Village" (paper presented at the Northwest
Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies Conference
on Southeast Asia and the New Economic Order, 1994). For a
similar pattern in Pursat, see Paula Uimonen, "Responses
to Revolutionary Change: A Study of Social Memory in a Khmer
Village" (master's thesis, Stockholm University, 1994).
5. World Bank, Cambodia: From Rehabilitation
to Reconstruction (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1994), p. 102.
6. See for instance, Willem van de Put, Empty
Hospitals, Thriving Business (Phnom Penh: Mdecins Sans Frontires,
1992).
7. Secretariat of State for Women's Affairs,
Kingdom of Cambodia, Report Submitted for the Second Asia
and Pacific Ministerial Conference in Jakarta, June 7-14,
1994, and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing,
September 1995, pp. 34, 41.
8. Asian Development Bank, Using Both Hands:
Women and Education in Cambodia (Manila: Asian Development
Bank, 1994), pp. 16-17.
9. Ibid., p. 18.
10. Asian Development Bank, Operational Strategy
Study for the Kingdom of Cambodia (Manila: Asian Development
Bank, 1995), p. 21.
11. A considered effort must be made to preserve
and utilize these small-scale studies. At least two libraries
in Phnom Penh, at the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC)
and at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI),
have collections of these valuable research reports.
12. Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, NGO
Statement to the Consultative Group Meeting, July 1996, p.
5.
13. See first-person accounts describing
the Khmer Rouge period, such as Haing Nor, Haing Ngor: A Cambodian
Odyssey (New York: Macmillan, 1987). See also studies on the
refugee camps in Thailand, such as Josephine Reynell, Political
Pawns: Refugees on the Thai-Kampuchean Border (Oxford: Oxford
University Refugee Studies Programme, 1989); Lindsay French,
"Enduring Holocaust, Surviving History: Displaced Cambodians
on the Thai-Cambodian Border, 1989-1991 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard
University, 1994); and May Ebihara et al., "Introduction"
in Cambodian Culture Since 1975: Homeland and Exile (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
14. John Vijghen cited in Viviane Frings,
"Cambodia After Decollectivization (1989-92)," Journal
of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 24, no. 1 (1994), pp. 50-66. Also
personal communication.
15. Ibid., p. 61.
16. Jan Ovesen et al., When Every Household
Is an Island: Social Organization and Power Structures in
Rural Cambodia (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 1996).
17. Ibid., pp. 66-67.
18. May M. Ebihara, "'Beyond Suffering':
The Recent History of a Cambodian Village," in The Challenge
of Reform in Indochina, ed. Borje Ljunggren (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 149-66.
19. Gabrielle Martel Lovea, Village des Environs
d'Angkor--Aspects Démographiques, économiques
et Sociologiques (Paris: Publ. de l'école Française
d'Extrême Orient, 1975), pp. 263-64.
20. For more information on this project
see, Building the Foundation of the Seila Programme: The 1996
Work Plan of the Cambodia Area Rehabilitation and Regeneration
(CARERE) Project (Phnom Penh: UNDP, 1996).
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