村落公共機能の強化をめざして : バングラデシュ農村開発の新戦略(<特集>バングラデシュ農村開発研究)

Abstract

The general weakness of the rural economy in Bangladesh is rooted mainly in weak rural infrastructural build-up rather than a weak cash economy. The "credit and training" program, which has been adopted as the mainstream rural development policy by most of the international, governmental and non-governmental organizations concerned with rural development, tends to stimulate self-centered incentives for economic uplift by individual villagers and may result in erosion of their efforts to build a sense of village "unity" or village public spiritedness. Matabbors, the traditional village leaders, and villagers willingly collect subscriptions amounting to several thousand takas, donate necessary lands and provide voluntary labor for renovating their mosque, building their madrasa, improving their hat ground and organizing festivals. But these same matabbors and villagers do not think of raising funds or contributing free labor to the building and repair of village infrastructures such as village roads, which are essential for activating their rural economy. Instead, they simply wait for the government to bring such public projects to the village. In turn, the government relies heavily on foreign assistance for building such public infrastructures, as it is not prepared to raise the necessary funds by levying local taxes. To the author, rural development should involve the villagers' joint efforts to build the public economy, which in turn would help strengthen their private economy, and should not simply be a program by which the government provides direct assistance to the private economy of the villagers. When this alternative concept of rural development is accepted by the villagers, the matabbors will be able to play their proper role of leadership in Bangladesh rural development.