Role of Union Plan Book in Rural Development: A Case Study of Dighalia Upazila under Khulna District

Abstract

The upliftment of rural area is necessary for overall development of Bangladesh where it comprises of about 85% the total landmass with 76. 6 I% of population. Rural Development (RD) is facing challenges due to high incidence of poverty, low resource endowment and low productivity, vulnerability to natural disasters, high unemployment and underemployment, high population growth rate and high density, diminishing land-man ratio, low level of economic growth, uneven social structure, unbalanced growth, and inappropriate development approaches. Besides these socio­economic problems, there are acute lack of physical infrastructures like road, embankment and drainage, irrigation channel, rural centre, and relevant service and facilities. To deal with rural problems, a series of RD efforts have emerged as well as practiced and in the course of time, some of the efforts have been changed, modif1ed, and also rejected. To address the overall rural development from physical and infrastructural perspective, the most recent and pragmatic RD effort is Union Plan Book (UPB). UPB is a mechanism for rural development which contains guidelines relating to physical infrastructure- road, drainage and embankment, irrigation, and land-use. It gives detail instructions about how the plan book and the maps of various components are to be drawn up, along with the rolling plait. To take the lessons and to guide the future planning and development of rural Bangladesh, a systematic evaluation of UPB has not yet been done. This research has taken the initiative of doing so from the view point of rural planning and development. The study objectives are: to review the past RD efforts in Bangladesh; to examine and analyze the origin, history and concept of UPB; to evaluate the performance of UP.B of Dighalia Upazila under Khulna District; to identify the problems and prospects of UPB in the study area; and to suggest measures for better implementation of UPB. It is an exploratory and evaluation types of study, in which documentary analysis, land-use and infrastructure survey, institutions survey, different tools of participatory rural appraisal, and mapping with geographic information system are combindly used. It has reviewed the past RD efforts, discussed the origin and concept of UPB, evaluated the UPB considering outputs, effects and impacts with the aim of identifying the problems and potentials, and finally suggesting the remedies. In ancient and medieval periods, due to interruption and discontinuity in administrative system- there was no systematic record of RD, except few scattered evidences. In 2nd and 3rd quarters of twentieth century, some important thoughts and theories on planning and physical development were developed around the globe, such as- to deal with great depression, the theory of Keynes ultimately introduced the rural development concepts in modem time. For Bangladesh, a continuation and formal shape of RD is seen from 1950s through different experiments of Comma Model, under the leadership of Dr. Akther Hameed Khan who lead a group of social scientists provided with the basic orientation of RD. From different experiments and development interventions of Comilla model, UPB was originated in the 1960s. Some achievements regarding UPB were found, particularly in road sector where some major improvements are seen. But the other components of UPB have not been considered properly by UPB team and so failed to bring desired changes in drainage, embankment, irrigation and rural land-use aspects. The achievement in terms of length of new road is not significant, but enormous changes are seen in road condition, accessible road length and user satisfaction level. After UPB, the length of accessible road, length of good condition road and user satisfaction level on roads increased by about two times, three times, and two times respectively. After UPB, the roadside land values have increased three to four times and others have almost doubled. Vehicle ownership has increased more or less two times. Moreover, there is land-use conflict between crop agriculture and settlements where the per capita cultivable land is only 0.055 acre. On the basis of land-use survey-• physical infrastructures, services and facilities a.re inadequate in the study area where the sum of the area of roads, commercial, service-facilities and institutional land are less than 2% of the total study area. In the study area road density is 1.62 km/sq km which is slightly below the national standard that is 1.74 km/sq km. In spite of aforesaid successes and road improvements, still the study area lacks in some rural infrastructures. The study has found that UPB is highly biased in favour of physical infrastructure due to having no planning norms and standards. There is no trained manpower specialized in planning at grassroots level where it also requires a full-fledged planning and development organization/institution to guide and control the overall development of the area under a multidisciplinary framework. From theoretical point of view UPB has promoted bottom-up planning and also provided with a good mechanism for rural development. The UPB team, at initial stage, due to poor perception of systematic planning and implementation, had hindrances to bring significant impact ot1 rural development through UPB in the study area. There is a direct relationship between unorganized union planning and lack of trained manpower/expertise, local resource mobilization, implementation capacity at union level. Finally, it presents some suggestions for UPB form the view-point of planning; it was found that UPB is not holistic and comprehensive where total planning is required with proper planning norms and standards for rural Bangladesh. Moreover, some modification in its planning and implementation process can expedite rural development.