The Great Indian Housing Test

With just two decades only left India’s aspirational goal to become a developed nation by 2047, the centenary year of its freedom from colonial yoke, appears to point to a bend in the road, with possibilities and perils in equal proportions! As home to 1.478 billion people, by far the world’s most populous nation, the country confronts a congeries of challenges in this arduous task, and the most crucial is the rapid pace of urbanization as people in the hinterland move away from the corner to the center to eke out existence for a decent living.

Naturally, a key query is whether there is any substantive strategy or any plan for a holistic long-term urban strategy aligned with the overarching objective of Viksit Bharat 2047, concatenating infrastructure creation, economic development, climate resilience, governance reforms and social inclusion of diverse and divergent sections across metropolises, Tier II and Tier III cities.

In this crucial issue, housing the teeming population is a tremendous task, beyond the capacity and resources of both the Central and State governments. Naturally, the real estate owners step in to meet a part of the hefty demand so that the restive population do not rise in revolt for lack of a modicum of shelter. Wherever possible, the States afford only low-cost housing or let shanties mushroom without any regulatory overreach to stem them, even as these things entail an unwholesome milieu in the urban landscape!

Adding to the difficulty is that there is no definitive information about the shortage of dwelling units across the country. In the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament the Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Manohar Lal said in response to a query that as per the Report of a Technical Group of 2011, total housing shortage at the start of the Twelfth Plan period (2012-17) that was subsequently abandoned when the Planning Commission was itself dismantled, was close to 19 million (precise numbers a 187.8 lakh)! It also estimated then that urban infrastructure investment requirements up to 2031 and projected urban population share to soar to 75 per cent by 2030. Since then, no such Committee was ever set up even after a lapse of one and a half decades.

Even as India’s long-term urban renewal demands substantial investment and strategic plans, the World Bank has estimated that India needs to invest about 840 billion dollars in urban infrastructure over the next 15 years up to 2036 to cope with the demands of its rising urban denizens.    

Meantime, the dwelling shortages would not have diminished even as the focus was kept on building houses for economically weaker sections of lower income groups under schemes titled Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana- Urban (PMAY-U) and its revamped version PMAY-U 2.0.

Be that as it may, even as more people get gobsmacked investing in their nest egg savings for a prospective dwelling unit of their own, not a day goes sans the newspapers seeing real estate tycoons placing full-page advertisements on the swanky housing gated community for the middle class and upper middle-class homeowners with a fancy price ranging from not less than fifty lakh of rupees to anywhere above one crore of rupees!

After many real estate businesses defalcated the public, including Unitech, it was only in 2016 that the Indian Parliament enacted the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act to safeguard home buyers, bring transparency to property deals and stem project delays to ensure that the buyers’ interests are not compromised. Still, REERA must go a long way in reassuring the public.

Considering the vast number of builders who do undertake housing construction activities using the loopholes of the law in the system and the number of unregistered cases do not inspire hope that the crucial realtors fulfil their remit, given the light-touch regulation in this vital area of economic activity with the tacit imprimatur of the authority.

It is time that domestic authorities cracked the whip so that the problems plaguing the real estate business do not impact the economy adversely, over and besides aggravating agonies to the people desirous of owning a home, one of the three cardinal desiderata of roti (food) kapada (clothes), aur (&) makhan (house).   

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.  

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