Author: Rekha Shreesh
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no.RD-10-09
Year: 2010
Academic Program: Regional and Rural Development Planning (RRDP)
Type: Thesis (M.Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 2010
Examination Committee: Gopal B. Thapa (Chairperson); Jayant Kumar Routray, Mokbul M. Ahmad (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: With growing investment in rural road, an issue of maintenance has also emerged in the last few years, particularly for rural roads which are often neglected. In an effort to solve this problem of sustaining rural roads, the governments of developing countries, guided by empirical studies, are slowly devolving the responsibilities of the road to the local authorities and the local people to be managed as road commons. However,the effectiveness of rural road managed by community is still a debatable issue. Community involvement has not always been sustainable as it is very much dependent on the characteristics of the users, road infrastructure and availability of resources. Thus, this research has focused on explaining the factors that contribute to the sustainability of rural road under user group arrangement. The study is based on two community-based rural roads selected from a hill district in the eastern part of Nepal. The analysis was done based on data and information collected through household survey of 123 households, key informant interviews, focus group and informal discussions. In addition, a walkover survey was done to investigate the rural road condition. Among the roads selected for study, both are in vehicle-pliable condition however, in technical terms, the second study area is in a much better state than the first study area.Thestudy reflects upon the fact that road commons cannot be treated like other commons, which have a fixed boundary and a set of defined users,as opposed to the road commons, which covers large geographic area without fixed boundaries and well defined usersmakingit a complex system and thus managingit is a challenge. However, the local institution has been able to devise a system of maintenance within the community even though the arrangement is informal. In addition, low level of community participation is attributed
Scholarship Donor(s): Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Regional and Rural Development Planning
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