What they want and what they receive on the way of reaching regional development in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The concept of regional development was rooted in Sri Lanka’s development agenda only after 1970s with respect to resolve the problems of unemployment, social unrest, the rising cost of living, declining of local production and the deteriorating of foreign exchange situation. In 1970, Regional Development Division was established and in 1979, District Integrated Rural Development Projects were introduced with the financial assistance of the World Bank. Since 1970’s regional development was a compulsory section of every development program and as a result enormous construction programs have been implemented in order to improving the standard of living in the periphery areas. But still there remains a problem of the level of development in periphery regions of the country from the perception of the people who living there. The study moved forward from this situation to identify the level of development/ the benefits of development from the perception of households with special reference to Abhayapuragrama in Trincomalee District, Eastern Province. Five major criteria were applied for evaluating respondents’ perception from the answers taken by semi-structured questionnaire. In addition, respondents’ awareness and contribution to development projects were taken in to the consideration to clarify the gap between what they need (priorities) and what they receive. The study was mainly a quantitative research in descriptive format that used descriptive statistics for the data analysis. Statistical treatment of the data included the use of (STATA). As per the value of Cronbach’s Alpha, the reliability of the study ranked at 0.713 which expose the high acceptability of the internal reliability of the study. The concise conclusion of findings revealed that most often it is not the lack of resources or development projects in the area but rather than lack of awareness of the outcome of development projects, inefficient of implementing projects, not answering the burning problems by the projects and especially failure to understand their problems in their proper context that impede/ minimize the actual benefits of development. Furthermore it was found that the differences in perception have been major contributory factors to failures and unsustainability of some development projects thereby constrains the regional development