Socio Economic Realities of Rural Life

View with images and charts

Socio Economic Realities of Rural Life

Introduction

This report is based on Live in Field Experience.

About 75%-80% of the people of our country live in village. The rest of the people of urban area depend on the village people directly or indirectly for various purposes. But we the people who live in the urban area have a pre –conceived idea that the village people are “Poor”, “Dirty” and “Illiterate”. But we cannot justify whether they are so or not.

Development of our country is based on our rural areas. Our politics, society, economic condition, literacy rate and health condition depend on our village. Though we are not concern about our village and villagers that’s why after 40 years of our independence we are still in under development country.

Objectives

This report on the rural community of Bangladesh has been drawn with a view to achieve two goals:

Firstly, as a partial requirement of the course Live in Field Experience (LFE)

Secondly, to get the information on the current condition of rural life, their economic system, socio economic infrastructure, culture, relationship between each other, household pattern, market and the market structure finding the intensity of the poverty in the village and different conditions from the villagers.

The objectives for which the report has been carried out are given below:

ü To familiarize the participants with real socio-economic realities of rural life by estimating literacy rate, level of education and working status of the population.

ü To identify the changes that are taking place in social structure and economic development by measuring their monthly income and expenditure, the ownership of land and occupation.

ü To know their agricultural method, cropping pattern, rotation of crops, and their seasonal life pattern.

ü To get the real picture of the present environmental condition of the village, like source of water supply, toilet facilities, and kind of fuel they use.

ü To reflect the state of health and health awareness, vaccination and other medical facilities are available in the village. Do they really practice some common unscientific practices and identify why they believe in these camouflaged truths? And what are the effects by taking these types of practices?

ü To identify the existing market structure of the village and thus end up with a proposed market structure and what steps are taken by them to distribute of their rural product.

Overview of the report

This report consist the following chapters:

· Village-Resource Mapping and Transect

· Social Structure and Social Change Process

· Income Assessment and Gender division of Labor

· Health and Environment Awareness Factors

· Rural Market Network

· Questionnaire Survey

Overview of MKP

A constant analysis of the magnitude of poverty and its trends, the strategies effective for its reduction and eventual elimination, and their meticulous implementation has brought MKP (Manob Kollan Porishod) where it is today. The MKP development process started in a few villages in some districts in few years before. The name MKP is an acronym of three Bangla words, which means Manob= Human, Kollan= Wellbeing and Porishod= Association. So it stands like: Wellbeing of Human Association.

Picture: Manob Kollan Porishod in Thakurgaon

Human development and empowerment of the poor who gradually stand tall to achieve freedom from poverty by themselves. Empowerment means that the poor are united and organized, become aware of the real causes of their impoverishment, develop leadership among themselves, mobilize their material resources, increase income and employment, develop capacities to cope with natural disasters, become functionally literate, take better care of their health, become engaged in environmental protection and regeneration, get elected in local government bodies and community institutions, and have better access to public and common property resources. Since its inception, MKP has been both a pioneer and practitioner of this holistic strategy of empowerment and has made a significant contribution to a modest reduction of poverty already achieved in Thakurgaon district.

Methodology

Methodology is a combined methods and logical frameworks that are used to achieve some goals. We used Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) technique in our field survey. In this report we have included both qualitative and quantitative information. But here the presence of qualitative information is higher.

Source of information

Primary information:

As for the concern of the report we have taken primary information from the villagers. And most likely they were our primary informants. Actually there was no particular selection of the informants but we have tried to take information from the persons who are a bit aged and educated mostly.

Secondary information:

Secondary information has been collected from various sources like some journals, publications regarding this topic, books of Bangladesh statistical bureau, finally our library in the Independent University Bangladesh from where we took references from many books.

PRA

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is a label given to an upward family of participatory approaches and methods that highlight local data and enable local people to make their own appraisal, analysis, and plans. PRA is originally developed for use in rural areas that has been employed successfully in a variety of settings. The principle of PRA is to enable advance practitioners, government officials, and local people to work together to plan context-appropriate programs.

The main theme of PRA can be shown with the help of the following diagram

Figure: PRA technique

We used the following PRA tools –

· Village-Resource Mapping and Transect

Observatory walks to study natural resources, topography, soils and vegetation, farming practices, problems and opportunities which are cross tallied with the resource mapping and modeling. It is done by walking through the area and we gathered a few villagers and asked them to draw the map on the soil, from where we had the idea about the actual map.

· Social Structure and Social Change Process:

The map concentrates on the important social establishment, different locations of households, crop fields and other resources of the village. The transect map gives a view of the village’s natural resources, topography, soils and vegetation. Farming practices, problems and opportunities which are cross tallied with the resource mapping

· Income Assessment and Gender division of Labor:

Gender analysis involves the desegregation of quantitative data by gender. It highlights the different roles and learned behavior of men and women based on gender attributes. These vary across cultures, class, ethnicity, income, education, and time; thus, gender analysis does not treat woman as a homogeneous group or gender attributes as immutable.

We also interviewing a suitable villager(s), who then classifies different members into separate groups identified as distinct economic classes in the village.

· Health and Environment Awareness Factors

These villages have different health condition. We can analyze it from different points of view. If we have focused on health issue, we can understand many things such as the education, social, economy, administrative, cultural and wealth peoples’ mental and physical condition on health.

· Rural Market Network:

For doing the market analysis we went to the haat during the haatbar. We interviewed different traders and sellers. We asked them different questions as we were instructed. We also interviewed some permanent shop owners. They gave us an idea about the product flow and distribution channels.

Introduction

Bangladesh is a land of village. More than 75% people live in village. This country depends on the important roles played by the villages in the development of the country. But the villages and villagers are always being neglected.

That’s why if we want to change the worse scenario the reformation should start from the grass root level. For this we need to improve our village condition, so to improve the overall country.

Population, voter, households

The population of Jagannathpur is approximately 4300. Among them male voter is 1150 and female voter is 1050. In my assigned area there are around 200 people are live in Barahaat Para. Where about 62 are male voter and about 55 is female. Most of the inhabitants are Muslim at the same time site by site other religious people are also staying in this village. From the table could come up one conclusion that this young age group people are staying this Barahaat Para.

Age	Male		Female
	No.	%	No.	%
1 to 20	14	11.97	10	8.55
21 to 40	14	11.97	15	12.82
41 to 60	15	12.82	14	11.97
61 to 80	5	4.27	7	5.98
81 to 100	8	6.84	5	4.27
Total	56	47.87	51	43.59

Table: Age and Sex Distribution of Study Population

History

We got a very interesting story about this para. By talking with the villager I found out why the name is so. Villagers said 100 years before twelve people came to this place from another area and made twelve houses. In Bengali twelve means “baro” so they decided to call this place as Barahaat para.

House type

People of Barahaat Para is used for living traditional houses, where house where build up by tin and bamboo combination. Recently they are using modern construction materials.

Family type

As like city and towns the villagers are moving joint families to nuclear families. In survey we have found 21 families running nuclear family structure, which was 84% and only 4 families as 16% in joint family structure. This change has a strong impact over the lifestyle of the villagers.

Family Type	No.	%
Nuclear	21	84
Joint	4	16
Total	25	100

Table: Family Type

School

From survey we have found that after primary school compilation drop out rate is too high, at the same time female condition is worse. In the Jagannathpur there are Primary School, one Girls High School (Jagannathpur Girls School) and six NGO School in Jagannathpur. In our assigned Para there is only one BRAC School where most of students enrolled as student, rest of them go to Jagannathpur Primary school.

Mosque and temple

Jagannathpur village there are 11 mosques and three Hindu temples. In Matihak Para there are 3, in Khalifa Para there are 2, in Nebda Para there is 1, In Mijanur Para there are 2 and in Doba Para there are 3 mosques. Again among the three Hindu temples one of them is in Barahaat Para and rests of the temples are in Khalifa Para.

Transect

To get the micro view of the whole Barahaat Para we do transect. Transect is on type of PRA technique which represents the structure of the whole village in terms of its components. It has overall impact on the relationships between the different important components of the village. It includes soil type, the land used pattern, the types of crops and trees, etc.

Findings

1. There are different types of tress has been found, among this Mango, Bamboo bush etc.

2. In my transect map house hold are made of mud and clay some are also break made houses

3. Barahaat Para land height is more or less plain, because people are using this land for agricultural purpose and house hold activates.

4. Soil type is more or less sandy and mixed people are using it for farming purpose.

5. Through my Transect map I have a cross lots of cultivable fields that is why I show different types of crops have been grown in the fields. Such as, potato, rice, corn etc.

Introduction

PRA formation has also helped us to construct the social change process map and wealth map. The changing process is an over all picture of the geographical and cultural changes that took place in the Gram due to civilization. And from the feed back of the Key Informants we were able to identify the

Time division

Classification of the status of the villagers in Barahaat Para which we have introduced in the resource map & wealth rank.

Timeline analysis is used to visualize the major perceived changes. This is done to take information about past events in the interrelated fields. We have divided the social change process into four time Frames which are as follows: Before liberation, 1971-1980, 1981-1990, 1991-2000, 2001-onwards.

Diagram of timeline breakdown

Population

Before liberation, it was a combination of the joint and extended families since early marriage was very much common at that time. In the joint family, the entire family used to be leaded by the head of the family (grandfather or father) that strained the children to live all together. After the liberation war, as the population of this area has increased, the amount of houses has also increased a lot. The influence of Islam has enforces some of the members to get separated in the village. The family planning has been introduced to jagannathpur and the people started to become conscious about family planning now.

Marriage type

Because the people were very much religious and illiterate the female were forced to get married in very early of their age. The female did not have the opportunity to exercise her right to choose. For this reason, early marriages are also referred to as forced marriages. The study concluded that deep-rooted traditions such as, considering marriage as a success for the girl and her family, ensuring virginity of the girl when she marries, concern that the girl will become too old for marriage, and creating a bond with the bridegroom’s family are the major reasons for child marriage. The study refuted the widely-accepted view that economic factors are the major reason for early marriage.

Agriculture

The scenario of agriculture is unlike to the others villages of the country. Agriculture is not the main occupation of the people of Jagannathpur village. The reason behind this is the poor condition of soil. But the situation was not as poor than today. Many crops like paddy, cauliflower, sugarcane, wheat and many other vegetables were grown there. But day by day the population has been increased and people were started to build houses in fertile land for living purpose. Though the Jagannathpur is situated in a hilly place, the soil is not also good for cultivation. It needs much irrigation to grow crops there.

Health

In pre liberation period to 1990 people are not aware about sanitation. They meet their natural call in open places, jungle or in hanging latrine. Now scenario is as changing people are becoming educated and economically strong, which make them more aware about sanitation. Now they use ring slab, Pit latrine.

Vaccination is first introduced in Bangladesh in 1982, but people in Barahaat got this facility after 1990. From that time, day by day people became more aware about vaccination. From our survey we knew that 25 families all give their children all vaccination 100% except hepatitis, because this vaccination was introduced only a few years ago. The vaccination for Polio is common in each family of this village.

Now a day, in our assigned village, people’s perception about family planning has changed significantly. The ratio of family planning is increasing and large numbers of families including the newly married families are interested in family planning. Presently NGOs and Government have taken proper steps in this region. Family planning and other steps have adopted by the villagers. So currently the growth rate of population is at a stable stage.

Women rights

Like all other country of the world Bangladesh government emphasize on women rights. Jagannathpur is Muslim area, like all other Muslim people in here not allowed women to do other than households work. Now-a- day’s people have become educated and flexible. They allow their women for education, casting votes, shopping and work out side or go outside for their needs. Women are now work in different Ego’s and take loan from NGO for doing small business.

Dowry

In Jagannathpur village the tendency of giving dowry is decreasing. Because the people are getting educated and women are more empowered than before. Law and order is effective there. But we cannot say it strongly that the dowry is fully diminished. It remains in its own state but the pattern of dowry has been changed.

Transportation

Before liberation when road was not good for that there was no suitable transportation system. If men had gone to work or visit relatives house outside the village they usually go by foot or use ox curt. And women will go one place to other also by foot. In 90?s road was became good and different transportation will introduced day by day in Barahaat Para such as Bicycle, Van, Rikshaw,2 strokes taxi and Motorcycle, etc.

Conclusion

Social change is a massive incident which cannot be clarified by this small study. But, after studying the rural life style of the villagers of the Barahaat para village, we found that there is some improvement like increasing rate of female education, decrease child marriage, increase the health care facilities, awareness about family planning, healthy sanitation, tree plantation, etc has taken place in the rural society.

Introduction

Bangladesh is an agricultural economy. The economic condition of Bangladesh is not in acceptable. As we know that if we compare our economy with our nearest country like India & Pakistan then we observed that it is very poor rather than other two. Most of the people in our country depend on agriculture, about 75% of the population is rural and 30% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is based on agriculture.

As we know that the LFE is a PRA base research, we influenced the villagers to classify them selves according to the information they have given. In their view, the primary indicators for judging wealth in their village are mainly land and occupation.

We surveyed a particular para of the Jagannathpur village named Barahaat para. People have many different schemes to identity allocation of resources, social classes or division of rank and wealth within societies. The sociologists concluded that social class depends on a single factor – the means of production – the lands, cattles, tools, properties and investment capital used to produce wealth.

Objectives of the study

To identify the overall socio-economic condition of the villagers:

• Wealth Ranking on the basis of income & possessed hold by the villagers.
• To find out the life style and discrimination of different group of people in the village.
• To have clear understanding about the agricultural pattern of the village.
• To understand the production cycle by identifying the seasonal production and to find out how people cope with the changes of seasons.

Wealth ranking

We will deliver information about financial condition of the families. We rank them according to their opinion and the data they provided us. We cover 33 families in that particular area with the help of the villagers. We divided the families in to three parts:

• Upper class
• Middle Class
• Lower class

Among the 33 families that we talked with we found upper class is about 5%, middle class is 30% and rest of all lower class families. We classified them by based on infrastructure, occupation, other income source, per month income, loan, land size, cattle, crops, remittance and per capita income. Highest number of families falls under middle class family in our ranking. Most of them are related with agricultural work and some are engaged in service.

Upper classes

We have found that, the average income of wealthy person is above 100,000tk yearly. We found they have 5 to 7 members in their family in average.Their children go to the school and college outside the village because there are only two schools in this Village. Most of the wealthy people are farmer but they have other income sources like service, remittance etc. If we compare with the others area of the country then we can say that the villagers of this Barahaat Para are not rich.

Middle classes

The middle class families are moderate earning level of farmers who grow enough to meet their operating cost. Some of them took loan form NGO and improve their living standard. They utilize their land as much as to produce more crops. They also want to make their children educated. This middle class family’s yearly income is between 50,000tk to 100,000tk yearly

Lower classes

They have very small amount of land and some of them work in to other land. They also don’t have enough money to open their own business. So they are engaged with seasonal work like day labor.

We talked with them about this matter and they said that Micro Credit system is blessings for them and also very helpful. And they will be able to do that only when they can go to up to that standard. Micro Credit can help them about this matter. With this kind of attitude now their income level is less then 30000 tk. And they are trying hard to come ahead with their inspiration.

Profession of the income earning members:

We’ve found that most of the people are related with the agriculture in Barahaatpara.But there are some other people who are related with other occupation. Like- they are involved with petty business, trolley driver, day labor and service. So we remark that the most important role playing beside this area’s economic condition is agriculture.

Profession	In the village
Agriculture	25	–
Poultry Rearing	–	–
Cattle/Goat Rearing	–	–
Petty Business/shop	5	–
Vendor	–	–
Transport Worker	3	–
Construction Worker	3	–
Garments Factory	–	–
Service	–	2
Industry	–	–
Others (day labor)	2	–

Form the table above, we can see that among the income earner 25 people earn through agricultural activities. It means almost 76% people are involved in agricultural work and rests of 24% percent people are engaged with other activities. The engagement of these peoples in different other works shows that people are going way slowly from agricultural work. Another reason is people are becoming more educated and they don’t feel good in agricultural work. They want to open their own business.

Main crops

Farmers produce various types of crops here. We get the main idea of the main crops in this area. They help us more to get accurate information about what they are doing actually. The main seasonal crops were Amon, Corn, Potato and Eggplant.

Amon

The land processing for Amon usually starts in the third week of Joistho, in the mean time farmers start irrigation. Then in the first week of Ashar they broadcast the seeds and last week they start weeding. In the second week of Srabon they give the fertilizer. From the middle of the Srabon to middle of the Agrahayon is the growing period and the harvesting period two weeks, that means till the second week of Poush. The production of Amon generally depends on rainfall, but over rainfall can damage the crops.

	Picture: Samples of the main crops

Corn

The land processing for Corn usually starts in Agrohayon, in the mean time farmers start irrigation. Then in the Magh-Falgun it starts transplantation and last week they start weeding, controlling pest, fertilize. In the Choitro is the growing period and in the mid Boishakh to mid Ashar is the time for harvesting.

Potato

It is the easiest crop to grow. The land processing for this potato usually starts in the third week of Katrik to mid Poush, in the mean time farmers start irrigation, using fertilizer. Then in the first week of Posh it grow and farmers starts harvesting.

Egg plant

The land processing for it starts in the second week of srabon to mid Bhadro, framers starts the seed bed in Ashar. Seed grows in Katrik which is two weeks from Ashar. Then transplantation and irrigation is on Poush. Plant grows on Poush. Then use of fertilizer,

Here in this weeding, control pest in Falgun. And of Choitro is the time for harvest.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION CYCLE

Month Crop

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

July

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Poush

Magh

Falgon

Choitro

Boish- akh

Joish- tho

Ashar

Sra- bon

Bha- dro

Ash-ar

Kar- tik

Agro- ha- yon

Po- ush

Paddy (Amon)

Corn (MK- 40)

Potato (GENELLA)

Egg- Plant (THEPALI)

Legend	Land preparation	Seed Bed	Transplan -tation	Seed Showing	Irrigation	Fertilizing	Pest control	Weeding	Growing period	Harve -sting
Color

Costs vs. benefit analysis

section we calculate the cost and benefit of the major crops cultivate in Barahaat Para. Here I have found that most of the farmers cultivate rice in their own land or in borga system. They also cultivate vegetables and fruits. The total cost of production from land preparation to harvesting is given in the next table and here I also mentioned the individual cost of each section of production. The cost of seeds, seedbed preparation, labour, pesticides, fertilizer, processing activities and distribution are given under land preparation, weeding, irrigation and harvesting. Finally, the profit farmers can gain by selling rice. In our calculation I tried show the cost and benefit of rice (Amon) potato, corn and egg-plant per bigha.

Crops	Total Production (per acre)	Selling price/ mound	Total selling price	Total Cost (tk.)	Profit (tk.)	Loss (tk.)	percentage (%)
Amon	50 mound	460 tk	23,000 tk	20,100 tk	2900 tk	—	14.4%
Corn	50 mound	400 tk	25,000 tk	27,200 tk	2200 tk	—	12%
Potato	20 mound	250 tk	18,500 tk	22,000 tk	2500 tk	—	15%
Egg-Plant	50 Mound	500 tk	25,000 tk	28,000 tk	3000 tk	—	10%

Conclusion

Agriculture has in the past been wholly dependent upon the vagaries of the monsoon. A poor monsoon has always meant poor harvests and the threat of famine. Among the remedial measures adopted has been the construction of a number of irrigation projects designed to control floods and to conserve rainwater for use in the dry months.

Introduction

Environmental health is becoming a major preoccupation on a world-wide scale. There is a close correlation between a population’s state of health and the quality of its environment. Public policies now include environmental concerns, which have strong implications in terms of development and well-being.

Health condition of Jagannathpur villageOur assigned area was Barahaat Para .The overall health condition of the village is quite good. NGOs are working for long time in this village and the social condition is improving a lot compare to previous time. I have found that people of this area are aware of vaccination and they regularly go to the nearby health complex to give their children all vaccination.

Sources of Water

Survival of human life without water is hard to think as it is the life saving natural element. They have knowledge about what type of water is healthy and what type of water spreads water diseases. By analyzing the collected data we can see awareness and uses of water in the following table:

Purpose	Sources
	Piped Water		Tube-well		Pump		Pond water		Others
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Drinking	0	0	23	92	0	0	0	0	0	0
Bathing	0	0	16	64	0	0	9	36	0	0
Washing	0	0	18	72	0	0	7	28	0	0
Cooking	0	0	23	92	0	0	0	0	0	0

Sanitation System

Healthy sanitation system is mostly responsible for the well being and health condition of the village. Before 1995, people didn’t have any good sanitation because of their lack of knowledge. But in 1995, Bangladesh Govt. gave ring slab at free cost. Now almost all people have ring slab. According to our survey, all the sanitation systems are appreciable and there were quite good number of healthy latrines.

Family Planning Method

Though our urban people are aware about the family planning but the rural people are not so conscious about it. According to survey data almost all women are used to take Somatic birth control injection and very few women take pills or other methods.

Toilet Facility

Type	No.	%
Septic Tank	6	23.08
Ring Slab	15	57.69
Pit Latrine	4	15.38
Others	1	3.85

Vaccination

The villagers also know very well about vaccination. According to our survey 100% people were 6 vaccinations, only 5% of the samples were aware of the 7th vaccination. The villagers become aware about vaccination through radio, NGO workers and vaccination cards.

Diseases

During our survey, we found that most of them suffered from common diseases like cough, acidity, seasonal fever etc. the most common disease among the children is diarrhea because children walk bare footed and sometimes they eat anything taken from the ground. We have found the following diseases in Barahaat Para.

Treatment facilities

According to our survey we found that the living people of Barahaatpara are very much conscious about their health and in case of any medical problem they go to the local pharmacy. Because of long distance from the village people can’t go to the health care center. Besides most of the villagers claim that, they have to wait a long time in health care center and sometimes the specialized doctors are not available for emergency treatment.

Environment of Barahaatpara

Environment is an important issue for everybody because health and environment are closely interrelated to each other. The discussion appended below will mainly put spotlight on the surroundings, weather and various other factors of Barahaat Para.

In case of water most of the people use tube-well water for drinking and cooking. Very few people use pond water for some specific purpose. The waste disposing way is quite hygienic of the villagers. They use firewood, straw, leaves and twigs as fuel, sometimes cow dung is used as fuel. The inner part of the village is surrounded by a long ditch and the entire village is covered mostly with bamboo trees. The villagers have a good number of vegetable and fruit trees and we also collect information about trees, birds and animals. The respondents said that there are many trees, birds and animals which are now extinct. The natural disasters are mainly heavy rain.

Cooking Places

In order to keep our health safe from various diseases we need good sanitation and cooking place.

It is hard for the villagers to get established cooking place which urban people can get easily. So visibly there cooking place is little bit unhygienic but in this current situation they complete their cook.

Waste Disposal

This is one of the major causes of our health and environment problem. If we don’t dump the waste properly then it will cause many problems especially health problem. In the field survey we observed that the villagers leave their waste in a hole beside their house and we found some other people who throw their waste into ditch and very few throw into specific place.

Trees, Birds & Animals of Barahaatpara

Type	Existing	Extinct
Trees	Mango, Coconut, Bamboo, Guava, Jackfruit, Palm, Neem, Banana.	Blackberry, Arjun, Sundori, Hegol, Choras, Mehgani.
Animals	Cow, Goat, Dog, Rat, Snake	Elephant, Deer, Wild Cat,
Birds	Parrot, Crow, Sparrow, Shalik,	Swan, Maneek, Peacock, Owl, Dahuk, Cuckoo.

The people of Barahaat Para are very much concern about the use of water. Though most of the villages of Bangladesh face water diseases due to using unhygienic water our village is completely free from such health risk. Another important risk factor for health is lack of healthy sanitation system and our assigned area is more conscious about healthy sanitation system. Vaccination facility in this village is average but the villagers need to be more aware of Hepatitis-B which is important as like as other vaccine. We keep close and easily consider the use of fire wood as fuel which has bad impact on environment.

conclusion

There is a close correlation between a population’s state of health and the quality of its environment. Public policies now include environmental concerns, which have strong implications in terms of development and well-being.

introduction

Market is set of all actual and potential buyers of a product or services. It is a mandatory element of our society which satisfies our emotional demand of life regardless whether it is in

a village or in a city. Market consists of people who buy products and services for their own personal use or for the use of others in the household. These buyers share a particular need or want that can be satisfied through exchanges and relationships. Both of them may act as an intermediary or distribution channel member between primary producers and final consumers. The product available in market in accordance to the product classification, the price of the commodities, the promotional activities and how the product reach from the manufacturer to the end user have been elaborately illustrated here.

To have a good practical idea about rural market and how it helps the overall condition of an economy, we surveyed with five different farmers and five businessmen or retailers, who go to Khocha Bari Haat to sell their products. We tried to find out what types of product the farmers & businessmen are selling, how much profit they are getting, what are their problems, what could be the possible solutions according to them. We also tried to find out overall problems in the haat area. Finally, we tried to analyze how this haat affects economically to” the village Jagannathpur”.

Khocha Bari Haat

Establishment: 1960

Area: 6 Acres

Property: Government

Approx Buyers: 1500

Approx sellers: 2000

Frequency: twice a week

Run By: A Committee of nine members

Contractual Value: 60 Lacs

Photo: Khocha Bari Haat

Commission Rate: 150 tk per sell

Bazaar and Haat

This is a very old and traditional concept which was introduced at a very early stage when market or malls were not established. There are no bookish definition of Haat because it’s the culture that is exclusively own by villagers. It is basically a market bigger in size and takes place in a specific location in a specific time. The time might be one or twice in a week or even in a month. Haat is a place where buyers and sellers gather to exchange their goods. Generally Haat takes place in easy locations.

Differences between Haat & Bazaar

According to our investigation we get some basic difference between Haat & Bazaar which are given below:

Factors	Haat	Bazaar
Price	Low	High
Duration	2 days/week	Everyday
Number of Buyers & sellers	1500-2000	300-500/day
Variety of Goods	High	Moderate
Availability	Low	High
Bargaining Power	High	Moderate
Services	Low	High
Communication	Low	High
Security	Low	High

Demand and Supply of products during Haat and Bazaar

As we surveyed the KhochaBari Bazaar during the Haat (Saturday and Tuesday), we have found that for the day prices of some products are different from the time of Bazaar (Except Saturday and Tuesday). It indicates that the prices of products are varying on the basis of Bazaar and Haat. Here in the below we have drawn two graphs for the products during Haat and Bazaar.

Graph: Hut Graph: Bazaar

Here in the above graphs we see that in the first graph of demand and supply for products in

Haat. We see that when the during the Haat when the customers are many and sellers are also huge, the supply of products usually increases, so the supply curve shifts rightward from S0 to S1. As a result the price level decreases from Po to P1. But during the Bazaar usually the supply of products remain normal than Haat. So in the above graph I see that the supply curve shifts leftward from S0 to S2 and the price level increases from P0 to P2.

Products and Services

“ A good, service or idea consisting of a bundle of tangible and intangible attributes that satisfies consumers and is received in exchange for money on other units of value.” —————————- R.A. Kerim, S.W Hartly, W

Name of the Product	Available Brands
Soap	Lux, Tibbet, Lifeboy, Keya, Meril
Shampoo	Sunsilk, All Clear, Vatika
Toothpaste	Close up, Fresh Gel
Hair Oil	ParacHaate, Gondhoraj, Jui
Fairness Cream	Fair & Lovely, Fair Plus, Ponds
Rice	BR-28, BR-29 (Hybrid)
Biri	Akij Biri, Taz Biri, Chawli, Biri
Powder	Tibbet, Meril
Savlon Cream	ACI
Salt	Molla Salt
Detergent/Soap	Jet, Keya ball soap
Cooking oil	Rupchanda, Teer, Fresh
Cigarette	K-2, Goldleaf, Benson, Star, Navy
Toothpowder	Pepsodent, Magic, Neemer Majon

Product Classification

There are different types of product. We ask to people what is this and also what is the function of this product. This product can be classified into two types according to their nature and function.

1. Consumer product

2. Industrial product

Consumer Product

It is purchased to consume directly. The customer does not have any intention to use it other than consumption.

Picture: Convenience Product

There are four kinds of consumer product.

1. Convenience product

2. Shopping product

3. Specialty product

4. Unsought product

7.6.1.1 Convenience Product: The consumer product that are frequently, immediately bought with a minimum comparison and buying effort to make life more convenient. It was found that rice, flour, vegetables, fruits, chira, muri, fish, meats, tea, beverages, oil, fuel wood are convenience products at Khochabari hut.

7.6.1.2 Shopping Products: Some products are purchase by the villagers at irregularly basic. They need to think before the purchase of these types of products. Kodal, belcha”, radio

7.6.1.3 Specialty product: Specialty goods have unique or brand identification for which adequate number of buyers is willing to make a special purchasing effort It was found that cow for cultivation, plough, fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, furniture, baby taxi, “rickshaw”, TV, freeze etc are specialty products.

7.6.1.4 Unsought product: Some products that the consumers do not willing to purchase but due to under pressure,