NCFD strategy: The Dagestani view

Strategy will deepen the abyss between the most and the least-developed regions.Dagestan constitutes one third of the North Caucasus Federal District,
however the share of Dagestan-related projects in the new NCFD
development strategy is much lower. Therefore, the Strategy will not
even out the level of the NCFD regions’ development, but will deepen
the abyss between the most and the least-developed ones.
Some experts, however, consider the policy of artificial equalization
of the North Caucasian regions to be inefficient. On the other hand,
not all factors influencing Dagestan's development potential were
included in the Strategy. Development projects were accepted and
included into the Strategy after a competition, but the quality of the
Dagestani projects was not high enough. So it turns out that it is
simpler to leave a whole region without development projects than to
fire incompetent bureaucrats who couldn’t submit worthy projects.
Only one of all the energy projects cited in the strategy will be
carried out in Dagestan, while hydroelectric plants are not mentioned
at all, despite the fact that they efficiently supply energy to
Dagestan and even export some surplus to other regions, using only 20%
of Dagestani mountain rivers’ potential. No industry or agricultural
projects are stipulated by the Strategy for Dagestan, which has a 60%
agricultural income budget and is one of the major Russian producers
of meat and grapes.
The project of the migration labor agency also met with a skeptical
response in the republic, as the majority of unemployed individuals
there are connected with agriculture and would need a new education to
work on some industrial objects in other regions of the Russian
Federation.
The Strategy stipulated the creation of supra-national institutions,
but the projects cited there support only one national culture -
Russian - and that does not help to settle the inter-ethnic conflicts
of North Caucasus.
Musa Musaev, Makhachkala, exclusively to VK.