Unable to declare a variable in Cygwin

I recently installed Cygwin on my windows vista to practice on Linux\unix commands.
I am unable to do a simple task of declaring variables on the command prompt
I am trying:

$ vech=Bus
$ echo $vech

bash: vech : command not found
What am I missing? Do i need to add something to .bashrc?

Also, I remember right click on the shell command gives the ability to copy or paste text from the shell. I am using Bash, how do I copy n paste text on shell window?
Thanks much

is there a space after ur variablename. may be for this shell is not accepting it as a variable.

vech =Bus

For ur second querry this copy option is client specific. You can use putty client to get these facility.