Landlessness and its Impact on Economic Development: A Case Study on Bangladesh

Abstract

This research has accomplished a critical appraisal on landlessness and economic development of Bangladesh through conducting a primary survey and traced out what are the best alternative recommendations to ameliorate land ownership pattern of the economy. Basically landlessness often materializes the manifestation of poverty, indebtedness and powerlessness of the majority of the rural households. The causes of landlessness and near-landlessness are numerous including dearth of land, rapid population growth, low productivity in agriculture, lack of effective government policies, colonial legacies etc. Due to these circumstances, land-oriented poverty and rural to urban migration without any expansion in the housing and utility services lead to the expansion of slump with all affiliated social problems. On the other hand, it has been found that landlessness diminishes the rate of land-fragmentation, which facilitates automation in production process through both extensive and intensive directions. Therefore, this research has uncovered that landlessness has a significant level of positive impacts on economic development through facilitating modern technology in primary sector. For social welfare, the policymakers can rehabilitate the landless people through creating income generating activities. In this regard, setting up agro-based industries as well as promoting employment in non-agricultural sector is a must for achieving potential economic growth. However, this research also identified that landlessness causes to boom up the service sector. It has been happened due to the radical emergence of non-government organizations that generated income oriented activities in the rural areas through social movement.

Keywords: Landlessness, Land-oriented Poverty, Economic Development

JEL Classification: Q15, O1