Irrigation cultivation of cotton, rice, olives, vines and fruits in the more favoured valleys in 1926-27 was about 50% less than in 1914, since irrigation works once ruined need much time and capital for their restoration. Wheat and barley are the chief grain crops.
There are valuable minerals, including coal in the Ura-Tyube district and the Zarafshan basin, iron in the latter district and in the valley of the Vanch, where manganese also occurs. These minerals and gold are worked in a primitive way in some localities. Lead, sulphur, asbestos and salt are reported, and there are hot springs, especially at Diushambe. The natural wealth is, however, unsurveyed, and there is little prospect of exploitation in the present absence of means of transport. There are small peasant weaving, carpentry, leather and milling industries to supply local needs only, and of the six industrial enterprises in the republic, four cotton cleaning, one printing and one flour-mill, none was working in 1926-27.
There is no railway; the link with Uzbekistan is a winding road from Derbent to Diushambe, which can be used by motors from April to October only. A railway to link Diushambe via Termez with the trans-Caspian line is planned.
The population consists of Tadzhiks 74.6% and Uzbeks the rest being Kirghiz, Kazaks, Turkmens, Arabs and Jews. It numbered 827,449 in 1926, having been much diminished in the post-1917 disturbances, when many fugitives took refuge in Af ghanistan.
The literacy rate is low throughout the republic and in the Badakshan area is probably less than 2%. Education is difficult
in this wild country and not more than 12% of the children of school age are provided for ; medical help is almost entirely lack ing. The Tadzhiks are Mohammedans, but not of a strict type, and in the remoter areas much primitive nature worship survives. Diushambe (q.v.) (pop., 1926, is the administrative centre.