Bangladesh Village Mapping

Village mapping

3.5.1 Selection of the village and para

The village Foamtala, was selected and assigned to us by the respected members of BARD. Our course director from BARD was Dr. Swapan Das Gupta and the three Faculty members of IUB, who were also involved in selecting the village was Mr. Naeem Abdullah, Ms. Faria Mehjabeen and Mr. Saifuddin Khalid. The para that was assigned to us was Uttar(north) para.

3.5.2 What is village mapping?

Village mapping is one of the methods of PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal). It is different than the geographical map because it is drawn by the villagers on the ground using their own ideas and techniques. Village map can be translated as the reflection of the village which gives a clear vision of almost everything found in the village. A village map also gives a clear vision of the social condition of a village. It portrays the settlement pattern and natural resources of the village. The village map consists of the roads, houses, its area, schools, colleges, makhtabs, satellite clinic, ponds, tube wells, shops, culverts, trees, paddy fields and so on.

3.5.3 Importance of the village map

The village map is drawn to represent the whole area of the village in the map and also to get the idea of the overall standing about:

1) The social structure of the village.

2) The different resources of the village.

3) The whole area through the map.

3.6 Overview of the Foamtala Village

Our assigned village was Foamtala. It has an area of approximately 1.25 square kilometers. The village has four paras. Uttar para, Dakhhin para, Purba para and Pashchim para. The main entrance of the village is from the east which connects it to the main Comilla town. The Foamtala village is surrounded by four other villages. On the northern side of Foamtala, the name of the village is Jalgaon, on the southern side it has Aamtala village, on the eastern side it has Uttar Lakhhipur village and on the western side the village is known as...