National Rural Development Policy -2001.

This National Rural Development Policy (NRDP) is a sectoral policy document. It is formulated in order to achieve comprehensive development of the country by keeping the present momentum of progress in poverty alleviation and rural life sustained. The main goals include: 1. To create an enabling environment for, and facilitate people’s self-development through unleashing their creativity and potentials; 2. To achieve comprehensive village development including improvement in the standards of living, increase in income and employment generation of rural people, particularly women and the poor. 3. To ensure stable social and economic development of Bangladesh through poverty alleviation; 4. To increase the opportunities for income generating activities in the rural areas through ensuring rural people’s participation in their development process, so that the purchasing power of the people is raised by increased income; 5. To generate widespread self-employment opportunities in the rural areas; 6.To ensure the improvement of the socio-economic conditions of the rural people in order to in increase their income and fulfill the basic needs. 7. To emphasize rural development with a view increasing national income and assets and achieving equality based economic development as per provisions of the Constitution; 8. To ensure the development of physical infrastructure in the rural areas, balanced distribution of resources among people and marketing of the products; 9. To create skilled human resources in the rural areas through imparting education, vocational education and training; 10.To make efforts to fulfill the needs of rural people through proper identification of the problems for socio-economic uplift of the rural poor and disadvantaged people and producers, specially the small, marginal and the landless farmers; 11. To ensure equal participation of women with men in all socio-economic and cultural development and cultural activities including education, training and income generating activities.
In the area of food security and nutrition, the NRDP indicates that around 50 percent of Bangladesh’s babies are underweight at birth due to malnutrition and ill health of their mothers. The vicious circle of malnutrition among the women of rural Bangladesh perpetuates the cycle of malnutrition and poverty for all rural Bangladeshis, both men and women. Thus the future of Bangladesh greatly depends on the status of the rural women of Bangladesh. Improving the conditions of rural women, ending their deprivation and subjugation, and also empowering them through the creation of opportunities for education, health, income and nutrition for them is, therefore, a central theme of the National Rural Development Policy. The Rural Health Services and Nutrition Development programme is proposed in the NRDP for: ensured access to physical and mental health services, and raised health and nutrition awareness through training; special emphasis on the extension of supply of safe water and modern sanitation; etc.
In order to make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the NRDP proposes: 1. Sustainable and environment friendly use of land will be encouraged to augment agricultural production; 2. With a view to preserve ecological balance and prevent indiscriminate damage of soil, forests, water ways and animals, regulatory measures will be taken; 3. to scale down the use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides and increase the use of organic manure in agriculture.
The NRDP emphasized the importance of integration of all activities in rural development with a view to alleviating poverty. It further focus on: a) Improving the quality of life of women and the poor; b) Economic development of landless and marginal farmers; c) Expansion of education, health, nutrition and family welfare activities; e) Creation of opportunities for rural people to become self-reliant economically; d) Ensuring proper utilization of all existing resources of each house and each village; e) Development of the handicapped, tribal people, ethnic minorities, and so on. In the Poverty Alleviation Programme in the NRDP, the proposed tasks include: taking measures to remove economic and social barriers; systematic and regular monitoring of positive changes in the socio-economic conditions of the rural poor; creating ample opportunities of diverse employment in the villages; necessary training, and assistance to create rural entrepreneurs; etc.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural system, the NRDP suggests: Marketing network of rural agricultural products will be developed and linked with the national and international markets; Market information services for small and poor growers and producers will be expanded; To ensure proper prices and facilitate marketing of the products of farmers, appropriate measures will be taken to link producers, processors, traders and exporters; greater network of cooperative-based production and marketing of rural agricultural produce will be encouraged.