Role of Rural-Urban Linkages in Local Development: A Comparative Study on Two Rural Settlements in Bangladesh

This research is an attempt to explore the role of rural-urban linkages in local economic development by comparing two diverse rural settlements, one is geographically well located and another one is geographically deprived. Exploring the rural-urban linkages, this research has identified four types of linkages (social, economic, political and ecological) that influence peoples’ mobility to town centres or marketplaces. Therefore, market interaction stimulates economic activities, more economic activities imply more transactions of money, and thus, economic development takes place in region. At the same time, it has also identified a comparison of the linkages between two diverse rural settlements to know the reasons for slow or faster development. The findings reveal that geographically well-located rural settlement is less developed in comparison to geographically deprived rural area. One of the main reasons for this less development in geographically well-located rural area is that there is an outflow of the money to outside of the country as people have the tendency to travel to outside of the country and the people who travel, are willing to invest and deposit money there. As a result, finance for local investment has not been mobilised that would limit employment opportunities. In addition to this, a number of problems that also undermine the scope of economic development in geographical well connected rural settlement, including water logging for almost half a year, lack of public transport, inadequate physical infrastructure along with political instability and social insecurity in the region has made the rural settlement economically poor compared to others. In contrast, in better developed rural area, the flow of people is within the region, therefore the flow of money. Thus, the money is reinvested in the region which generates opportunities for employment although the generated jobs are very informal. Moreover, the study provides some issues to consider for opening employment opportunities by promoting positive linkages and discouraging negative linkages which can foster local development in rural Bangladesh.

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