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 government attention, 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. Some RMs (not GCs) like Chutipur, Kalarhat and Durbadanga have also been found into
medium class. The number of low 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.
