The Rural Study Design

The rural component of this study involved two field surveys in Kazipur thana—a severely affected area located on the Brahmaputra-Jamuna River. The first field investigation was part of a broader project of the Riverbank Erosion Impact Study (REIS) carried out in the summer months of 1985. This study was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, and administered jointly by the University of Manitoba, Canada and Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, during 1983–1988. I undertook a follow-up study in 1995, sponsored by the Brandon University Research Committee (BURC), under the auspices of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Ottawa. In order to allow a direct comparison, the same survey instruments were used in the two rural surveys, though a few items, particularly those concerning flooding issues were added in the 1995 survey.