Rural Development and Changing Class Structure in Bangladesh

This post is also available in: Japanese

16. Rural Development and Changing Class Structure in Bangladesh.

FUJITA, Koichi.
Published in January, 2005
Kyoto University Press.

 

Description

This book deals with the impact of the “Green Revolution” on rural class structure in Bangladesh and West Bengal Province in India. The author is concerned with the dynamics of the birth and development of what he calls the “groundwater market” and with structural changes in rural financial markets. The “Green Revolution” came in full force to Bangladesh and West Bengal Province in the 1980s. Holders of tube wells became the main disseminators, but small and middle-scale peasants and landless laborers also benefited because of the changing groundwater market. The author also discovered the widespread phenomenon of financial “backwater,” which landless agricultural laborers and small-scale peasants lent to middle and upper-level farmers. This allowed for the effective development of poverty reduction programs like the Grameen Bank. The book won the The Okita Memorial Prize (2005) and the Kashiyama Junzo Award (2007).