Rural Development in the Era of Globalization: An Assessment of the Performance of Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD)

Abstract

Rural development refers to the planned efforts undertaken to reduce or eliminate poverty, enhance resilience, stimulate ecological sustainability, and form capability to encounter these and other encounters confronted by the non-urban extents in Developing Countries (DCs). Rural development pursues to expand the eminence of life in the rural extents with instantaneous determinations to assist growth, efficiency, and well-being of the residents. Globalization is now generally accepted as an irresistible force affecting every aspect of human life in today‟s world. Unobstructed trade of goods and services, and prodigious development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and socio-cultural integration across the globe appears to be a major consequence of globalization. The aggressive advancement of globalization coupled with the market economy has been persistently changing the old concepts, practices and systems of rural development, especially in the developing countries. Bangladesh is a vast rural based country. The rural development academy contributes on the major share of the gross domestic product. Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) was established in 1959 for rural development. The organization has been working in the field of training and research for rural development since its inception. It has successfully blended the academic research, training and action research to mobilize the rural people into highly motivated economic agents. The Academy never considered rural development to be a playground of novice do-gooders. It continued to maintain rural development is a professional job which can be learnt only through systematic training and hard work. But the present performance of BARD in the globalized world needs to be assessed. This paper has examined the rural development in the era of globalization and it is an assessment of the performance of BARD. The objectives of the study are to examine the challenges of BARD to manage its performance in the context of globalization; assess the factors involved in performance of BARD in the context of globalization; and suggest recommendations to overcome the problems facing by BARD to promote rural development. In this study, a modest attempt has been taken to give picture of the Rural Development in the Era of Globalization with special reference to BARD‟s Performance. BARD has kept a continuous impact on Rural Development in Bangladesh. In order to measure the performance of BARD, the management practices undertaken by BARD, financial management of the academy, major functions accomplished by the organization, leadership status of BARD and faculty members‟ performance have been assessed here.