Comparative study of growth centres and their surrounding rural markets

Abstract

Bangladesh is an agricultural country with predominantly a rural character. About 76%(BER,2010) people live in rural areas. Rural people meet their needs from rural markets. This rural markets are the heart of rural economy. In Bangladesh ,there are about 8000 rural markets (RM), popularly known as 'hat or bazaar' . These markets are the hub of rural economy helping in exchange of agricultural and other products. In 1984, Government of Bangladesh adopted a policy for identifying the selected RM as Growth Centres (GC), following certain criteria, to be the focus of rural development where investment in rural economic and social infrastructure should be concentrated. The Planning Commission selected 2100 RM as GC from 1984 to 1994. GC, provided with all the govelllIJ1entattention, theoretically demand new settlements and socio-economic infrastructures and other land uses including transport developments groWing around it. From this point of view, the GCs are supposed to be most vibrant rural centres in Bangladesh which serve as nerve centres of economic and social activities. However, observations and objections stats that many GCs have failed to achieve the goal and failed to work as the shaft of development in rural areas. In such a context, the main objective of this research is to compare the performance of Growth Centres (GCs) and their surrounding Rural Markets (RMs) in the study areas based on selected criteria (from secondary literature) and identify well and weakly functioning GCs. Then this study has sought to find out the causes for efficient and inefficient functioning of the GCs. The study has been conducted on Jessore district (due to availability of data on GCs in south-west region of Bangladesh and existence highest number of GCs in Jessore in the region). In the beginning of the study, to fulfill the 1st objectives, CI score is calculated for all 188 rural markets (including 16 growth centres) in 3 Upazilas. Then the calculated CI score is grouped in three categories, namely highly developed, Medium developed, low developed rural markets. It has been found that out of 16 GCs 8 (Chinatola, Rajgonj, Monirampur, Jhikorgacha, Bakra, Navaran and Bagachara, Benapole) have got the. highly developed rank while 8 others have fallen into medium developed category. s. II Some RMs (not GCs) like Chutipur, Kalarhat and Durbadanga have also been found into medium class. The number oflow developed rural markets is 107. Thus well and weakly performing growth centres automatically identified from the categories of RMs. Now to identify the causes of weak functioning of GCs, other than reconnaissance surveys, Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Key Informants' Interview (KII) have been conducted in all 16 GCs and 16 other nearest rural markets (which are performing comparatively well; understood and identified by better CI-score) from 3 Upazilas of Jessore districts. The field study showed that the availability of different socio economic structure is the main causes of better performance the growth centres and rural markets. Again it has been found that all the highly developed RMs (GCs as well) are comparatively old and suitably located at the cross road of major roads. It means that, in many cases new or recently established RMs near/beside minor roads have been selected as GCs.which have consequently failed achieve expected goal.