This paper argues that the dimension of territory or space is indispensable to a development strategy and that regions,¹ as the platform for human society rather than artificial division between rural and urban, should provide the unit of analysis in the development process. While macro-level reforms can provide a sound policy framework and effective incentives, it is at the regional level that appropriate interventions can be identified and implemented. This paper suggests a general framework for such an approach, and illustrates it through a case study of a district in Nepal where conscious efforts have been made to improve linkages...

The literature concerned with rural―urban interdependencies has explicitly or implicitly depended on a virtuous circle of growth model (Mellor 1976, Friedmann and Douglass 1978, Evans 1992, and Douglass 1998). The virtuous circle model takes note of intersectoral (farm―non-farm) and inter-settlement dependencies. With some caveats, the proponents of such model implied that growth could be propagated from sector to sector and place to place through the linkages and interdependencies.

The proponents of agricultural growth maintain that agricultural development is the key to overall development. Such line of argument, as summarized by Evans (1992), is as follows:

“…rising agricultural incomes spur demand...

One purpose of this paper is to develop a policy framework for synergistic rural―urban development. In order to do so, this study reviews the intervention of the Rural Urban Partnership Programme (RUPP) in and around the municipality of Butwal in Nepal. It must be pointed out that this paper is not intended as an evaluation of RUPP’s activities in Butwal per se. Rather, it is intended more as a detailed look at RUPP’s modus operandi, thereby gaining insights for synergistic rural-urban development.

Such a study of RUPP’s modality is important because, as the brief reviews of PARUL (KPEL) in Indonesia...

This chapter describes a field study conducted in and around Butwal, a partner municipality in RUPP―Nepal, with the aim of understanding first, the nature of RUPP’s enterprise linkages and second, the extent of decentralized governance, community mobilization and empowerment created by RUPP’s intervention. By examining the social, administrative and resource context of the district of Rupendehi, RUPP’s contribution to the overall process of creating growth linkages is also addressed.

Butwal is a medium-sized municipal town in Nepal, and is one of two municipalities in the district of Rupendehi, the other being Siddharthnagar (Figure 6). With a population of 44,272 in...

The central question in the development of rural regions is raising productivity and retention of enough multiplier effects within the local economy (comprising small towns and rural areas in a contiguous micro-region). The examination of RUPP-Butwal in general, and the enterprises in particular, provides important insights into the local dynamics of reciprocal linkage creation. In this chapter, we examine this in the context of Rupendehi district. The discussion also identifies opportunities for improvements to RUPP.

While this requires more than one necessary condition, productivity increase can fairly be identified as the basic condition. As has been identified, RUPP’s small budget...