Regional Development Approach in Rural Economy and Social Development in Kedah

Since New Economic Policy (1971) until New Economic Model (2011), the issue of poverty and development remain as among the top priority of Malaysia government agenda. A lot of programs, policies and agencies involved in this exercise of reducing poverty level in our country while at the same time strive hard to boost up the country development in ensuring the achievement of Vision 2020. Kedah Regional Development Authority or KEDA is one of the local development authorities involve in this exercise. The objective of this study is to know the contribution of KEDA’s development approaches and strategies in rural community development in Kedah in term of economic development and social wellbeing. All nine zones under KEDA will be covered in this study, where the respondents consist of 315 households of Desa KEDA and ten senior officers at KEDA Office. Mix methods will be applied for research methods and data will be analysed by using IBM SPSS Statistic software and NVivo software. The outcomes of the study able to give the current finding of the KEDA’s contribution towards rural community development in Kedah since the last study was done 22 years ago (last study was in 1994).