There is no public bus service from the town of Noyemberyan to the hamlet of Debedavan. You can pay 350 drams, around one dollar, for a bus that will take you from Bagratashen and drop you off some five kilometers from Debedavan. You’ll have to chose how to traverse the rest; either by foot or taxi. To meet the villagers of Debedavan you’ll have to go to the community’s only drinking water fountain outside the municipal office, where residents line up from early morning on to fill up their buckets.

Years ago, the scene was the same, with Debedavan villagers standing in queue day and night for the barely flowing water. The only man we bumped into standing in the water line vigorously complained, “I don’t respect this government. We grow sunflowers, watermelon and corn. Everything is expensive the year round except when we sell our goods. Then prices drop.” Most of the residents of Debedavan are those forced to flee their homes in the village of Jalet, in the Vardashen region of Azerbaijan, as well as those refugees from the Koutkashen and Khanlar regions of Azerbaijan. 71 year-old Olya Ghahramanyan hails from the Chaylou village in Nagorno-Karabakh, now under Azerbaijani control. She left the grave of her husband behind in Chaylou. Today, this mother of five sons lives in a rented house in Debedavan with her 26 year-old psychologically-ill son. Olya says that when she arrived in Debedavan in 1992 there were no vacant houses. She applied to the authorities many times to be allocated a house but to no avail. This woman was the only one present at the water fountain who proved brave enough to give out her name, but likely spurred on to do so given her dire straits. My bewilderment grew even deeper regarding the level of fear these people felt who, despite being fed up with their daily lives refused to speak out and identify themselves, when the only male in this group of women aloudly proclaimed, “Right, it’s 1937 all over again. They’ll come in the dead of night and take us away.”

The community budget: a very big secret

I’ve known Debedavan community mayor Salavat Babayan for quite a long time. But he seemed to have changed when I visited him this time; his gaze appeared to be a bit hazy. When I asked him about the community’s budget he couldn’t even give me a number. Soon his deputy appeared, a man with an interesting name, Fedya Elchebekyan. He too couldn’t tell me anything about the community’s budget. A bit afterwards a tractor driver named Aram Aramyan entered the municipal office where we were milling about. Mr. Aramyan is one of the five community council members who is now serving his second term in office but he too had no clue about the local budget. Luckily, Lousik Sahakyan, the municipality’s secretary soon showed up and handed me a registry of the community council records. It turns out that on February 12, 2009, the community council debated the implementation of the 2008 budget and they assessed the implementation of the budget of this 800 soul community as being “adequate”. However, the “adequate” was covered over with some white glue and replaced with a mark of “good”. In this fashion, all the marks appearing in the budget had been whitened-out and edited. According to the figures, last year’s budget was carried out to the tune of 77%. 4.3 million drams in land taxes were collected, or 68% of what had been forecasted. 1.2 million in land rents had been collected or 96% of the forecasted amount. Property taxes amounted to 157,000 drams (63%). State supplemental payments of 2.8 million drams were discharged in total last year. The vast bulk of 2008 budgetary expenditures, 5.8 million, was spent on the salaries of the seven municipal employees. A relatively large amount of the community’s resources, 2.5 million drams, went to subsidize the kindergarten. At the same council session the 2009 budget, amounting to 12,987,600 drams, was passed. Even though the amount of the state supplement went up a bit to 4 million, the revenue figures recorded in the budget are unrealistic, to put it mildly.  Due to the uncollected debts of the previous year, the collection plan for land taxes has swelled and has reached 7.4 million drams. The plan for other taxes as well, although to a smaller extent, has increased due to last year’s debt. While budgets around the world are being frozen due to the financial crisis, in Debedavan they have decided to even collect the debts from last years. There are serious doubts as to whether the Yerevan Champagne and Wine Factory, that purchased 700 tons of grapes from the residents of Debedavan at 130 drams per kilo in 2008, will be back this year to buy more of the local harvest.

5 workers are getting paid to look after 5 kindergarten pupils

The situation at the village kindergarten is a separate topic for discussion entirely. Compared to last year’s 2.5 million, this year’s budget plans to subsidize the kindergarten to the tune of 3 million drams. Community Mayor Babayan was behind the opening of the pre-school in May, 2006. His daughter is employed as the kindergarten’s “educator”. His son, Garnik Babayan, who’s engaged in several types of athletics, is down on the municipality employment registered as a “sports instructor”. Presently, there are five individuals employed at the kindergarten with only five pupils; director, educator, assistant educator, accountant and cook.  Liana Babayan, the assistant educator, told us the number of pupils at the kindergarten would soon be going up. It wasn’t clear why this sudden rise was to be expected. The mayor told us that there were many kindergarten aged children in the village but that the parents weren’t sending them to the pre-school because of the 3,000 dram monthly meal fee. In his words, the kindergarten, registered as a separate entity, owes 250,000 drams to the state pension fund. So that this debt doesn’t increase, the mayor is ready to propose to the community council that the kindergarten, that he himself created just three years ago, be shut down. If this is the case, what remains puzzling is why this year’s budget calls for a 3 million dram kindergarten subsidy.

An “optimistic conclusion”

Salavat Babayan, a former shopkeeper, has been governing this community for the past eleven years. A large photo of Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s president and head of the Republican Party, hangs in his office at the municipality.  A 2008 presidential campaign poster emblazoned with the party’s slogan “Forward Armenia” still hangs in the store the mayor owns not far from the municipality office. The store isn’t opened for business however. Salavat Babayan remains optimistic. “Eleven years ago when I assumed to job of mayor there were only two cars in all of Debedavan. Now there are fifty. The only Armenian TV programs you could watch in the village were those of Public TV and that was because we installed huge antennae in front of the municipality. Now, Debedavan residents can tune into ten Georgian channels as well. Another source for the mayor’s positive outlook is the fact that some 8,000 pineapple trees have been planted in the village in the past three years. The land of Debedavan is quite fertile and 70% of the arable fields are irrigated.  In 2004, the brother of Stepan Gishyan, director of the ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank, a native of Noyemberyan by birth, leased 50 hectares of land for twenty-five years. The Community mayor says that lands in reserve will also be made available for long-term leasing this year as well, but this time to local residents. When talking to us, local Debedavan residents complained about the lack of irrigation water in the summer and how difficult it was to sell their produce. Many of the villagers have taken out bank loans and are now burdened with interest payments. In addition to the village’s only water fountain, local residents get their water from an artesian well some 52 meters deep. In accordance with the salaried public works program, the construction of a 1,500 meter water pipeline from the well is envisaged to be completed by May 31, along with the planting of 300 saplings. Eight or nine village residents will be employed to carry out this work.