Moragahakanda development project in Sri Lanka: localization of development projects in rural and effects on communities

Abstract

As a resolute development strategy and also in view of establishing agro-based development initiative, the well-known Moragahakanda reservoir project has established for the rural community development. This project is designed with the scope of establishing dry-zone industrial and drinking water supplying project also with the focus on hydro-electricity generation. The Data gathering corresponding to the study is pursued in the Laggala – Pallegama police area having centered the district of Matale where the project was being implemented and selected 68 families applying simple and random sampling method and the data collection along with the questionnaires, observations and interviews. The process of sufficient data analysis was attended via SPSS & Microsoft Excel software added with adequate scale of data analysis. Accordingly, the area allocated for the construction of Moragahakanda reservoir ( Kulasinghe reservoir) in the district of Matale was an area of rural neighborhood hence, a process was followed to shift the families from their residential locations to lately identified new settlement area. Subsequently, the change of residences from inherited site as well as from the deep-rooted social structure and to be fixed into a new location there had been several impacts on the status of employment, income, social relationships, village based attitudinal values and in principle that aggregated influences affected the rural social structure is visible positively as well as negatively through this Research.