Bangladesh is a village based country. Most of the people live in villages. Most of the city dwellers also come from villages. Every village has its own characteristics and customs, so villages are the basic unit of social bondage among the people in Bangladesh . Therefore, it is imperative to develop villages for the betterment of the people in Bangladesh . Village development accelerates overall development of the country. There are almost 85 thousand villages in this country. Lots of works have to be done for village development. Villagers have been trying to improve their livelihood by their own initiatives. Government of Bangladesh has also been providing various services for village development, such as education, agriculture, health, and livestock, including physical infrastructure development like construction of bridges and culverts. However, in most of cases, these services are not well known to the villagers. These services often do not serve the villagers' needs. In fact, it is not possible to improve livelihoods of the people only through efforts by the government. It is true that the government has its limitation, but the most important point is to take all available services to the people and make the people participate in development process. Such a gigantic task cannot be achieved by a single organization or by a single person alone. Thus, it is imperative to have a mechanism to coordinate all the people engaged in rural development activities
From 1986 to 1990, Ministry of Agriculture took an initiative to implement an experimental project, named JSARD (Joint Study on Agriculture and Rural Development), through the Bangladesh Agricultural University with technical assistance from JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). During this project, various data related to agriculture and rural development were collected and several problems were identified. Later, in order to find out an alternative approach to rural development in Bangladesh , JSRDE (Joint Study on Rural Development Experiment) project was implemented by BARD from 1992 to 1995 with support from the Rural Development and Cooperative Division and technical assistance from JICA. Based on the success and experiences of the above-mentioned two research projects, PRDP (Participatory Rural Development Project) started in April 2000 as a pilot project in four Unions in Kalihati Upazila, Tangail, under Bangladesh Rural Development Board with technical cooperation from JICA.
In rural Bangladesh , various governmental organizations provide different services related to rural development according to their annual plan. Therefore, duplication and lack of coordination among the services provided by these organizations occur very frequently. As a result, time and scarce resources are wasted. Under these circumstances, it becomes impossible to achieve rural development. In order to overcome this problem, Link Model, which is being implemented in PRDP, is introduced as an alternative approach.
Bangladesh is a village based country. Most of the people live in villages. Most of the city dwellers also come from villages. Every village has its own characteristics and customs, so villages are the basic unit of social bondage among the people in Bangladesh . Therefore, it is imperative to develop villages for the betterment of the people in Bangladesh . Village development accelerates overall development of the country. There are almost 85 thousand villages in this country. Lots of works have to be done for village development. Villagers have been trying to improve their livelihood by their own initiatives. Government of Bangladesh has also been providing various services for village development, such as education, agriculture, health, and livestock, including physical infrastructure development like construction of bridges and culverts. However, in most of cases, these services are not well known to the villagers. These services often do not serve the villagers' needs. In fact, it is not possible to improve livelihoods of the people only through efforts by the government. It is true that the government has its limitation, but the most important point is to take all available services to the people and make the people participate in development process. Such a gigantic task cannot be achieved by a single organization or by a single person alone. Thus, it is imperative to have a mechanism to coordinate all the people engaged in rural development activities 
