Author: Nithyendra St. Valentine Thurairajah
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no. HS-80-28
Year: 1980
Academic Program: Human Settlement (HS)
Type: Thesis (M.Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 1983
Examination Committee: Hiran D. Dias (Chairperson); Karl E. Weber, Walter E. J. Tips (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: The peasant sector in Sri Lanka relies heavily on periodic and other non-periodic markets constituting the rural market system for marketing agricultural produce which does not enjoy institutional marketing outlets. In the peasant sector since only paddy enjoys such an outlet, other crops like subsidiary foodcrops, garden produce, vegetables and fruit which form an important supplementary source of income to paddy income rely on rural markets for disposal of surplus. The rural markets, although embendded in the socio-economic and cultural milieu of the peasantry has not been recognized by planners and policy makers as an area for development as the planners have been guilty of being preoccupied with the paddy sector. The study attempts to provide an understanding of the functioning of rural markets as a system by concentrating on the factors related to periodicity and permanency of rural markets. Earlier studies on periodic markets have mainly concentrated on the wet zone. This study is conducted in a dry zone environment in the Eastern part of Sri Lanka in the Batticaloa district. The wholesale trade in the periodic markets is dominated by traders engaging in such activities and a part-time occupation. The periodic markets are linked to one another by the mobile characteristics of traders who traverse well defined circuits. Periodicity of degree of stability of rural markets is measured by the mobile characteristics of traders, range of markets in circuits and mean number of markets of traders. These same measures are adopted to arrive at a hierarchy of periodic markets. The locational distribution of markets seem to follow closely the transport network and is related to the population density. As permanency of markets are gradually established, there is a corresponding positive relationship between range of commodities offered, number of traders present and the market size. The permanent non-periodic daily markets have an entirely different distributary network having two important regional towns as its su
Scholarship Donor(s): Government of New Zealand and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science
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