Socioeconomic Conditions, Agricultural Practices and Communication Status of the Vulnerable Haor People in Bangladesh

Abstract

Haor is basin like structure where water remains either stagnant or in flash flooding condition and agricultural activities are limited to four to five months in any year due to inundate on flood water. The main crop boro are usually damaged by flash floods nearly every year. So, the present study has been conducted with the specific objectives such as to assess the socio-economic background of the households, their agriculture practices and communication status they enjoy in disaster prone haor areas; to investigate reasons of vulnerability in haor community. The whole accomplishment process ensured HH questionnaire survey and sampled 150 HHs was from 6 different villages of three Haors, Dekar Haor, Kalner Haor and Karchar Haor by name. Two villages from each haor were selected at random. The HHs was also selected randomly. Data obtained from the 150 households (HH) undergone simple statistical analysis using MS XL and SPSS for analysing the survey data. The socioeconomic conditions of the peoples of the study area poor as larger family size, smaller income resulting to compensate expenditure according to income, mean land possess are 40.4 decimals only, mean income was 10,346 BDT, 28% are illiterate etc. Agriculture is the main occupation, above 28% are agriculture labor and 56% have secondary occupations. There were 27% who owned livestock, 24% had pond or haor share for fishing. They prefer BRRI dhan 29 and BRRI dhan 28 nearly equally (50% and 48% of them respectively) and duck rearing. Agriculture, livestock and fisheries are ranked as one for choice of occupation by 52%, 36% and 7.3% respectively. Nearly 50% face challenges to get price from their crops. The communication is easy in wet season and good weather by river transport but incurs cost and time consuming. The 100% respondents face floods of varying nature and 98% asked they are not resilient. Therefore, people in haor basins are vulnerable due to their current socioeconomic conditions, agriculture practices, health services and communication status making them limitations in cases of access to high-tech agricultural practices for improved production which in turn lead to sound socioeconomic status of those people.