Rural Development planned change towards the improvement of the economic and
social lifestyle of the rural poor through increased production, equitable distribution of
resources, and empowerment. In general, a planned change can be of two major kinds,
rural institution building and advancement in technology. Although agricultural
development constitutes a major part of it, rural development is a much broader
process which aims at the development of the rural economy as a whole. In fact, it is a
process that encompasses the entire gamut of technical, economic, political and social
changes related to private and public efforts geared towards increasing the well being
of rural citizens.
Specific targets of rural development in today's Bangladesh include the rural poor,
especially the more disadvantaged groups of women and children. Rural development
aims at building the capacity of these target groups to control their surrounding
environment accompanied by wider distribution of benefits resulting from such
control. The key elements of rural development in Bangladesh are: (a) poverty
alleviation and raising the living standards of the rural poor; (b) equitable distribution
of income and wealth; (c) wider employment opportunities; (d) participation of the
local people in planning, decision-making, implementation process, benefit sharing,
evaluation of rural development programmes, and (e) 'empowerment' or more
economic and political power to the rural masses to control the use and distribution of
scarce resources.
Before emerging as an independent state in 1971, Bangladesh had some forms of rural
development institutions e.g village-based governments whose origin can be traced
back to ancient times. The predominant assignment of these village governments was
to collect revenue for the central government followed by other functions as
maintenance of law and order and promotion of trade and commerce. The Mughal
rulers hardly showed any systematic institutional approach to rural development,
except for the construction of limited rural infrastructure and emergency relief
operation.
The British created a loyal landed class of zamindars through the Permanent
Settlement Act of 1793. The new zamindari system institutionalised the indigenous
rural organisations in Bengal and provided the central regime with a sound revenue
and political support base. Some philanthropists, including public officials, pioneered
a number of localised and limited but laudable programmes in rural development. For
example, the great poet RABINDRANATH TAGORE founded the institution of Sriniketan
in 1921 to instill the sense of cooperation among the villagers. Under the purview of
this institution, the Palli Mangal Samity (village welfare society), health cooperatives,
adult education centres, and handicraft training centres were established.
AK FAZLUL HUQ established a number of educational institutions and facilitated the
promulgation of a series of legislation to encounter the problems of indebtedness and
illiteracy of the Bengal peasantry. The great Indian philosopher and politician, MK
Gandhi, envisioned the establishment of ideal villages of Ramraj (kingdom of Rama)
based on small scale agriculture and cottage craft, managed on the principle of self-
reliance. Noted public officials who held high offices under the British colonial rulers,
namely Guru Sadaya Dutta, NM Khan, TIM Chowdhury and others, also
experimented with rural development schemes within their respective jurisdictions.
The Village Agricultural and Industrial Development (V-AID) programme, launched
in 1953 with technical assistance from the government of United States, marked the
first governmental attempt to promote citizens participation in the sphere of rural
development in Pakistan. V-AID encompassed all major sectors of rural development
such as agriculture, primary education, health, sanitation, cooperatives, land
reclamation, physical infrastructure, social and recreational activities. However, the
programme largely failed to take roots, as little attention was given to institution-
building and community organisations at the grassroots, and all supports were
ultimately withdrawn from the project in 1961. The poor performance of V-AID
contributed to the conception and development of the COMILLA MODEL of rural
development, engineered by the Pakistan Academy of Rural Development (renamed
subsequently as BANGLADESH ACADEMY FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT (BARD). The
four constituent elements of the model were: (a) Rural Works Programme aimed
primarily to build communication and drainage network by using local manpower; (b)
Thana Training and Development Centre to train villagers on such issues as new
agricultural technology, cooperation, citizen's right and obligation; (c) Thana
Irrigation Programme to provide irrigation facilities to farmers and to encourage
community management of pumps and tube-wells; (d) Two-tier Cooperatives to
promote cooperation among villagers by establishing two supplementary cooperative
structures, one at the thana level and the other at the village level.
In 1959, a four-tier local government system called the BASIC DEMOCRACIES (BD) was
launched by the military government of MOHAMMAD AYUB KHAN, consisting of union,
thana, district and divisional councils. In order to integrate the BD and the V-AID
programmes, one major national level development organisation was also created
under the purview of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. Although the
proponents of the BD system claimed that it was intended to acquaint citizens with the
art of democratic self-government, its subterranean purpose as claimed by its
opponents, was to serve the political objectives of the ruling regime by creating a
privileged group of electors heavily patronised by the state to act as its trusted 'vote
banks'.
Bangladesh, since her birth, witnessed ceaseless experimentation with varied rural
development approaches. In the initial years after independence a number of voluntary
and public agencies worked to build up the war-torn economy and society primarily in
the form of relief and rehabilitation work. In 1972, the government activated the
Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) to replicate and expand the
Comilla Model in other parts of the country. Later the programme was transformed
into an institution called Bangladesh Rural Development Board (BRDB). The BRDB
eventually became the largest government organisation involved in rural development.
Its main activities include rural poverty alleviation and production oriented schemes,
expansion of the two-tier cooperatives, and target group oriented projects such as the
rural women project, rural poor project, and agricultural development project. The
Swanirvar (self-reliance) Movement, a government patronised rural development
scheme, was launched in 1975. Distinctive features of the movement were the shift of
focus of rural development intervention from thana to village level, formation of the
institution of Gram Sabha or village assembly consisting of adult members in the
village, and preparation of the participatory village plan of development activities.
One major documented scheme under the programme was the Ulashi-Jadunathpur
Canal Digging Project in Jessore district, which brought 18,000 acres of previously
waterlogged land under cultivation by excavating a 4.26km long irrigation canal.
As distinct from the sectoral approaches to rural development, the BARD launched
the Comprehensive Village Development Programme in 1975 with the principal
objective of ameliorating the socio-economic status of all groups of people in a village
through a common institutional framework. The BARD also sponsored another
experimental programme, the Small Farmers Development Programme with the
operational focus on small farmers in 1993. Its broad objective was to organise the
target farmers and landless labourers by providing them with necessary inputs and
services for production and institution building. Other major governmental rural
development projects include the Vulnerable Group Development, Thana Resource
Development and Employment Project, Rural Social Service Programme, Community
Development Programme, Self-reliance Programme for Rural Women, and
technologies for rural employment.
The government's current rural development policy's main emphasis is, as manifested
in the latest perspective plan and other public documents, on employment oriented
growth, greater citizen participation in development activities, greater cooperation
between public and private sectors, specialised programmes for the disadvantaged
groups such as rural poor women, ethnic minorities, children, and the elderly people.
Alongside the public initiative, the voluntary and private organisations, more
popularly known as the non-governmental Organisations (NGO) cover an wide range
of rural development activities including those oriented towards development of
income and employment, health and sanitation, agriculture and rural craft, vocational
education, relief and rehabilitation, family planning, mother and childcare. There are
many NGOs in the country including 89 international ones. Many national NGOs
were born out of the relief and rehabilitation activities during the early 1970s. One
predominating approach to rural development by the NGOs involves poverty
alleviation through rendering small scale credit to the purposively organised groups of
rural poor and landless people, commonly coined as the 'micro credit model'. A
number of NGOs have achieved national and international reputation through this
approach, notably the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Grameen
Bank, Proshika Manobik Unnayan Kendra, and Rangpur-Dinajpur Rural Service.
From an analysis of the past experiences in rural development efforts, a number of
major problems can be identified which thwarted the successful performance of such
efforts. The major problems include instability of rural development institutions,
inefficient and corrupt leadership, abuse of local government institutions by the
central regimes, lack of an articulated rural development policy, inequitable
distribution of benefits arising out of the rural development programmes, limited
natural and logistic resources, elite dominance in rural development planning and
action, and an inconducive rural society. The general characteristics of the rural socio-
economic fabric of Bangladesh pose a challenge to effective implementation of rural
development schemes. The characteristics include low level of capital formulation,
dependence of the economy on agriculture, lack of skilled and educated manpower,
unemployment, inflation, ever increasing dependence on foreign assistance, rapid
population growth, rural political factionalism and instability, frequent natural
disasters, underdeveloped market and fiscal institutions, and investment in
unproductive sectors. [Niaz Ahmed Khan]
