Impact of Padma Bridge on Agriculture and Livelihood as Perceived by the Stakeholders

Abstract

By the inauguration of Padma Bridge, many avenues have been opened. Especially it has impacted a lot for the improvement of Agriculture and Livelihood. The study was conducted with a view to identifying the impact of Padma Bridge on agriculture and livelihood as perceived by the stakeholders. Data were collected from the respondents with a pretested interview schedule through personal interview during January 1-15, 2023. All of the respondents perceived that Padma Bridge has high (22.5%) to very high (77.5%) impact on Agriculture and Livelihood. Most (98.5%) of the respondents agreed that time requirement to travel from Khulna to Dhaka has been decreased due to Padma Bridge followed by treatment of patients being easy now due to low time requirements to travel to hospitals (97.25%), time requirement for transportation of agricultural goods decreased (94.5%), availability and frequency of vehicles have been increased (94.5%), quality of agricultural commodities remained fresh (93.5%), price of agricultural goods has been increased in production zones (92.5%) etc. Only 64% of the respondents agreed that intensification of crop production has been increased and 64.75% of the respondents also agreed that per day income of farmer has increased. Among eleven selected characteristics, organizational participation (P <0.05), cosmopolitanism (P <0.01), agricultural training received (P <0.01) and extension media contact (P <0.01) of the respondents showed a significant positive relationship with their perceived impact. On the other hand, only family size (P <0.05) showed a significant negative relationship with their perceived impact.