Abstract:
Since, rural development is an approach intended to advance the social and economic life of an exact group of people, which are the rural poor. Rural development normally denotes to the process of improving the quality of life and economic wellbeing of
individuals those who living in comparatively remote and sparsely populated areas. In rural societies, there are number of features that need to be established and when improvements would take place in these areas, then rural individuals would be able to protected better livelihoods opportunities. Since rural communities can be found in all nations around the globe and most of them are in the developing nation. In this line, Sri Lanka as a developing country, it contains rural areas in most of itself. Further, there are so many challenges identified in this rural areas, especially in the development activities. Thus, the government and non governmental organizations and its policies are framed in order to get rid from this underdeveloped nature, still there are certain barriers underwent by the people those who are living in the rural places. In this background, the rural community of Maththamagoda area also facing some problems in its own, so the researcher conduct this study among the people in Maththamagoda Grama Sewaka (GS) Division located in Kegalle district, Sabaragamuwa province. The main objective of this study is to investigate the challenges faced in the rural development in the aththamagoda area. The qualitative data were used and the material and data for this study have been collected from primary as well as secondary sources. Primary data have been collected from unstructured interview with 10 people those who are in the Maththamagoda such as leader of the mosque, school principle, secretary of the school development committee and seven local people accordingly. Along with this, key informant interview also undertaken with the Grama Sewakar of the Maththamagoda GS division. Secondary data have been collected from journals, books, web sources and previously conducted research and reports by the researcher. The collected data were analyzed by interpretative method. The researcher found unemployment, participation in minority jobs,
participation in other activities, inadequate financial management, borrowing loans, illiteracy and unawareness, occurrence of natural calamities and disasters, large families, health careneeds, migration and domestic violence as a major challenges which xperience by the people in the Maththamagoda area and those are being as a barrier for the rural development in that area. Finally, as an overcoming factors, self-reliance, improvement of human capabilities, improvement of economic capabilities, environmental conditions, infrastructure, law and order, education, training programs, distributive justice, medical and health care were proposed.
