DERECHOS HUMANOS DE LA MUJER

Since Doi Moi was officially launched in the 6^th Communist Party Congress in 1986, Vietnam has undergone economy liberalisation aimed at ‘developing the market economy with multiple components according to the market mechanism under state management and oriented towards socialism’ (Article 15, Chapter II, Constitution 1992). During the 1990s, state policies focused on the decentralisation of state management in order to improve the effectiveness of national policies and ensure that they reach the lowest level: the people. The Vietnamese state adopted a statement by President Ho Chi Minh—’the commune level, being closest to the people, is the foundation of our public administration. If the commune level works, then all our work will proceed smoothly’ (translated in Fritzen 2002:2³⁷)—as the core principle of its decentralisation policy.

Fritzen (2002:9) asserts that Vietnam’s state’s decentralisation consists of 2 elements. First is de-concentration, in which the central level assigns specific implementation duties to different levels.

Second is political devolution, in which ‘local governments acquire real discretion, resources and, as the phrase implies, rights’. (ibid:9). Decentralisation has been implemented in Vietnam in 3 dimensions:

fiscal, administrative and political. While fiscal and administrative decentralisation has been carried out through administrative reforms (cải cách hành chính), political decentralisation is conducted through grassroots democratisation (dân chủ hóa cơ sở) with the aim of giving more power to local levels down to commune level (Ordinance on Grassroots Democracy — Practicing Democracy in Commune, Ward and Town 34/2007/PL-UBTVQH11³⁸).

As it enters the 21^th century, Vietnam has increased participation by private entities in various state-managed activities, following socialisation and privatisation policies since the early 2000s.

The socialisation (xã hội hóa) policy, as stipulated in the Socio-Economic Development Plan 2006–2010 by Norlund et al. (2007:6), calls for society to make contributions to education, vocational training, health, culture, sport and the environment. This policy has opened up the

37 Translation by the author of the following: ‘Cấp xã là gần gũi nhân dân nhất, là nền tảng của hành chính. Cấp xã làm được việc thì mọi công việc đề xong xuôi’, Hồ Chí Minh Toàn Tập, Volume 5, p. 371. Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 1995.

38 This replaced the Grassroots Democracy Decree 79/2003/NĐ-CP, whose main theme was ‘people know, people discuss, people do and people inspect’.

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country’s economy to private sector participation through privatisation in the form of equitisation (cổ phần hóa).

Equitisation is defined as the transformation of SOEs into joint-stock companies and selling part of the shares in the company to private investors in order to improve the performance of the firms in question.

(Truong Dong Loc 2006:41)

Similarly, the newly equitised firms exist in a space between state control and private sector.

Gainsborough (2009:266, 268) describes equitisation in Vietnam as private indirect government, a notion which Hibou (2004) uses to contend that the power over enterprises the state has retained as a shareholders is uncertainty. Among others, many state cadres operate private enterprises³⁹.

Water resource management at national level is the responsibility of different ministries, depending on their activities (see Nguyen Thi Phuong Loan 2010a:62 for a chart of state responsibilities for water resources management at national level). Since the MONRE was established in 2002 (Government Decree 91/2002/NĐ-CP), there has been an on-going rearrangement of tasks between MONRE and the MARD, the 2 primary ministries managing the water sector. Increasingly, tasks have been transferred from MARD to MONRE and its line agencies. The water-related duties of MONRE and MARD can be summarised as follows:

 MONRE: responsible for general water resources, mineral resources, geology, the environment, meteorology, hydrology, cartography, sea and inlands

 MARD: manages agriculture, forestry, salt-making, fisheries, irrigation, flood and disaster prevention and rural development

In the incomplete transfer of tasks between the 2 ministries, irrigation remains under the purview of MARD because it is closely related to agriculture, which falls under MARD’s management umbrella. There has been competition and confusion about the designation of authority and responsibility for various water activities between MARD and MONRE (Benedikter :148-149).

Ultimately, the hydrocracies rely on irrigation to consolidate state power, and as long as they maintain the existing state structure for irrigation management, the 2 different ministries are unlikely to dilute this process.

39 This was confirmed by Evers and Benedikter (2009) based on the cases of private hydraulics construction firms in the Mekong Delta.

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Today, irrigation is basically managed by MARD, its line offices and cadres across various administrative levels⁴⁰ (see Figure 4-6 for an example of the state organisational set-up of irrigation management from Can Tho). MARD includes the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development at the provincial level (DARD) and the Offices of DARD at the district level, which are responsible for the general management tasks in irrigation. DARD’s district offices are called either offices of agriculture for the rural district (huyện) or offices of economics for urban district (quận). In the transitional Can Tho, half of urban districts still have agriculture as their main economic activities. Thus, the offices of both economics and agriculture are responsible for implementing agricultural mandates from DARD.

The duties of the DARD district offices include planning agricultural production; implementing the sowing schedule for rice cultivation; providing technical support for communes in co-operation with other professional agencies, such as extension offices, irrigation stations and plant protection collaborators; facilitating the mechanisation of agriculture sector to support commune cadres in arranging harvest contracting between farmers and companies; and receiving reports from the communes about the production situation and communicating the reports to DARD.

In irrigation maintenance, the DARD district offices either assist the provincial sub-departments of irrigation in managing dredging projects or directly organise smaller dredging projects. Reports about the condition of canals in the district to the provincial level are one product of these activities. DARD district offices also take responsibility for implementing other national programmes, such as the standard field⁴¹ and new rural area⁴²programmes. As seen in all the districts I observed (3 agricultural districts and 1 in transition to an industrial urban district), the DARD’s office is the most important and leading office at the district level wherever agriculture remains an locality’s main income source. Thus, the office wields significant power over the arrangements of irrigation and agriculture production and irrigation maintenance. Based on its position at the border between policy and local state arrangements, it repackages existing

40 See Decree No. 01/2008/ND-CP for the detail of tasks assignment to MARD and DARD towards water resources management focusing on irrigation (Bucx et al. 2010:32).

41 Standard field (Cánh đồng mẫu) is an agricultural program which encourages consolidating fields to cultivate the same variety at the same time, along with jointly managing irrigation with a closed dyke system, mechanising all stages of cultivation, and making sales contract and/or farming contracts with the business sector. This model started in An Giang during the 2010 winter–spring season and has spreading in the delta and other areas in Vietnam.

42 The building new rural area (Nông thôn mới) programme aims to construct and organise the life of rural residents in a modern, civilised way and to preserve culture and the environment. This programme is intended to support infrastructure for social and economic development suitable for local planning and to combine support from the State in enhancing internal capacity (Nguyen Anh Thuy 2011).

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adaptations at the commune level into reports that suit the demands of provincial and national ministries.

In addition to the generalised tasks of irrigation management, peripheral duties, such as providing technologies and directing specific construction, operation and maintenance projects, are delegates to professional agencies: Department of Water Resource Management at the ministerial level and its branches. The Sub-Department of Irrigation Management performs these tasks at the provincial level, irrigation stations at the district level, and irrigation and rural transportation cadre at the commune level. At the hamlet level, the irrigation sector falls within hamlet affairs and is taken care by hamlet People’s Board. While the irrigation offices at the central, provincial and district levels take on the general responsibility for managing irrigation, irrigation cadres in the communes can have a wider scope of work, depending on local arrangements. In most cases, irrigation and rural road cadres have the leading role in organising agricultural production, including arranging irrigation and drainage activities, facilitating the contract process and implementing various state programmes with other commune cadres, assisting and/or organising canal dredging projects and managing rural road construction, maintenance and repairs.

Additionally, extension cadres and plant protection collaborators often based in the commune are also active in irrigation activities within the scope of their responsibilities for agricultural production. According to horizontal subordination, the professional agencies are under the supervision of and accountable to the general management office at the same level: the People’s Committees. Vertically, they have report to their line agencies one level higher. Thus, the organisations of irrigation management and agricultural production have many points of contact, creating an environment permitting adjustment and adaptation to the local situation.

This research in Can Tho illustrates that the actual task and efficiency of irrigation cadres varies among communes, depending on the incentive to work effectively, which increases individuals’

prestige with commune’s leaders and leads to ‘being trusted to take more responsibilities’ (interview 18.10.2011). For example, at the commune level, instead of the hierarchical division of task regulated by legal documents, task division is flexible, driven by kinship, personal relations (good at working with others) and past personal performance. This phenomenon is further analysed in Chapter 5, focusing on a case of sowing and field drainage management in which the localised task division helps increase the commune’s working efficiency but also reflects inequality in work, which might allow laziness on the part of some cadres and space for others to hold a power monopoly. In many cases, the local arrangements for task division aim to fulfil or balance multiple purposes or, in other words, multiple pressures. One cadre might want to fulfil both

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state mandates and personal interests, perhaps gaining prestige to climb to a higher state position or financial or other in-kind benefits through projects and programmes (officially or informally).

Other cadres might also consider the community’s demands that are not recognised or contrary to state mandates.

Actual arrangements of who does what often comes after formality. At the commune level, formality is expressed in the annual establishment of Agricultural Production Steering Board during the meeting for production planning before the winter–spring rice season. The boards consists of hamlet leaders, along with the general managers of the commune, the People’s Committee leaders and professional, extension, irrigation and rural transportation cadres. As well, the leaders of the commune’s Party unit can serve as the Production Board’s leader, if the position is not given to a leader of the People’s Committee. With this task division among the leaders, only 1 of the Party’s leaders and 1 of the People’s Committee’s leaders join the Production Board. For the People’s Committee, the vice president responsible for economy (the other is responsible for social and cultural activities) receives the responsibility. Frequently, 1 cadre holds a double position in both the People’s Committee and the commune’s Party unit.

The last seats on the Production Board go to representatives of mass organisations, mostly from farmers’, women’s, veteran’s and youth’s unions.

The gathering of state and party cadres responsible for the socio-economic fields in the Production Board illustrates the state’s attempts to enhance the collaboration of local cadres in a united force implementing state policy at the commune level. This system can be considered as corresponding institutional reform, as contended by Waibel (2010:22). The Production Board members are tasked with guiding, managing and reporting the hamlet’s and commune’s production. The board is especially active in the winter–spring season, when rice planting over a large area and field drainage before sowing, which requires much organisational effort in many parts of the Delta, are planned. In general, each leader of the Commune People’s Committee (CPC), Party unit and mass organisations is appointed to a directing role in 1 or 2 hamlets. These cadres are responsible for supervising all affairs in these hamlets and reporting them to the commune. This management structure of the Production Board illustrates the ideology that has guided the Vietnamese party–state working system: ‘collective leadership, individual responsibility’. This ideology is adapted by the party–state in recognition of Ho Chi Minh’s idea of management.

One person, despite talent and experience, only recognises and considers one or some of the many aspects of an issue but not all. Therefore, we need more people to provide more experience; some can see this aspect,

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while others recognise other aspects of the same issue. With contributions of experience and opinions on the issue from different people, the issue or problem is assessed thoroughly. Only when we see all the aspects will problems be solved effectively without any mistake. (Ho Chi Minh, cited in Ho Chi Minh toan tap 2011:619, cited in Nguyen The Thang 2012, translated by the author)

However, the practices at the commune rely more on local arrangements of leadership and decision making. Most of these arrangements do not involve all cadres supposedly involved in the collective leadership, and there is consistent overlap of responsibility. Sometimes, the gathering of cadres into the Production Board is a symbolic bureaucratic task as only 2-3 cadres actually carry out the production planning tasks. In the 3 researched communes, 1 or more of the group of 3—the irrigation and rural road cadre, the extension cadre and the Farmer’s Union cadre—served as the main managers and facilitators responsible for commune’s production. The task division differs among communes depending on their specific arrangement. However, the lack of an official collective meeting for decision making does not necessarily mean that the absence of collective leadership. At the local level, collective leadership is carried out in a more flexible form through informal and individual communications. The local forms of decision making are illustrated in Chapter 5 through the management of field drainage for the 2011–2012 winter–spring rice season.

Local collective leadership tends to take different forms than bureaucratic design. Although collective decision-making does occur, it does not happen all the time, and not all required cadres join the process. The question is whether these variances create an ineffective working system.

According to Ho Chi Minh, ‘If leadership is not based on collective action, it will cause the problems of excuses, authoritarianism, and subjectivity. Consequently, it will lead to failure’ (Ho Chi Minh Toan Tap, 505, cited in Nguyen The Thang 2012). Observation in the communes shows that non-collective decision making indeed leads to problems of excuses, authoritarianism and subjectivity, when only some hold the power to decide how to implement policies and handling local affairs. Nevertheless, those consequences might not result in management failure. In many cases, partly collective, local leadership complements other local problems of task division and inefficiency. When some cadres do not actively perform their responsibilities (see Chapter 5 on the incentives and obstacles to local cadres’ work), others have to take over and skip the process of collective decision making.

Also joining the Production Board, hamlet leaders are the representatives from the hamlet bureaucracy who discuss plans and issues with the commune state and directly take care of

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production in the hamlet. The state structure in the hamlet consists of several cadres organised in the hamlet’s People’s Board headed by the hamlet chief and a vice chief. The hamlet is not considered a legal state unit, so hamlet cadres are only state assistants and receive allowances, instead of salaries. In addition, the secretariat and deputy of the hamlet’s Party unit, representatives of mass organisations, and police officers make up a party–state body of up to 11 cadres in each hamlet. At this level, the Party unit plays the leading role in most activities, and the leader of the People’s Board is often the hamlet chief. The Board is responsible for implementing the commune’s mandates, being in close contact with farmers and their organisations (i.e. operatives, groups) and supporting and listening to their requests and comments. The co-operatives and groups’ status, position and relation to the state, which have been debated, are further analysed in section 4.4.3. Similarly to the commune level, the ideology of ‘collective leadership, individual responsibility’ is also implemented in the hamlet. During the winter–spring rice production period, the People’s Board appoints cadres responsible for zones within the hamlet.

The hamlet People’s Board is a state-designed body and receives mandates from the commune state. At the same time, the board’s members of hamlet cadres are grassroots individuals and frequently understand and partly represent the people’s interests. These cadres stand at an interface between the state’s policies and local interests, where their decision-making is, on one hand, very much responsive to the local conditions and interests as insiders of the farming community and, on the other hand, regulated by the state’s bureaucratic format and mandates.

Isolated from the practice of diversity which the superior state increasingly recognises, the hamlet’s cadres frequently enjoy a certain level of freedom to make amendments to negotiate the various factors influencing a single event. The low compensatory allowance for the ‘part-time’ job, held alongside individual farming tasks, makes the efficiency of hamlet’s cadres depend very much on individual incentives to help the state achieve its targets.

In addition, the research in Can Tho finds that hamlet cadres are both administrative and socially prestigious leaders. This status is the result of lengthy and successful state penetration into the local affairs, or, in other words, the impact of the prolonged process of interaction and adaptation between statecraft and local arrangements in the Mekong Delta.

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Figure 4-6. State organisation of irrigation management in Can Tho

Made by author, adapted from Benedikter and Waibel (2013:16).

Having focused on the local levels, it should be noted that the commune and hamlet levels are practically not part of official decentralisation. The Joint Donor Report (2010:v, 27) contends

Central level National Assembly Ministry of Agriculture Rural Development

(MARD)

Water Resouces Department

Provicical level Provincial

People’s Committee

DARD Sub-department of

Irrigation Management

District level District

People’s Committee District Office of Agriculture and Rural Development

Irrigation station

Commune level Commune

People’s Committee Extension cadre Irrigation and Rural Transport cadre

Agricultural Production Steering Board

Farmers Hamlet

People’s Board Hamlet chiefs

Mass organisations’

leaders Commune People’s

Committee leaders

Hamlet level

Cooperatives groups Communist Party’s

leaders

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that decentralisation in Vietnam has transferred significant power to provinces but less to district and commune governments. Adding to this argument, Fritzen (2006:6) asserts that the decentralised system in Vietnam is ‘“centralized” at the provincial level’, and

the commune level — despite being the “foundation of our public administration” in Ho Chi Minh’s phrase — is unlikely to see major changes in its resources or authority, given the current administrative culture of control that marks most officials at the provincial and district levels of government’. (ibid:25)

the commune level — despite being the “foundation of our public administration” in Ho Chi Minh’s phrase — is unlikely to see major changes in its resources or authority, given the current administrative culture of control that marks most officials at the provincial and district levels of government’. (ibid:25)