FE Editorial : Facilitate, don’t build

The Financial Express
Posted: Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009 at 2037 hrs IST
Updated: Wednesday, Jul 01, 2009 at 2037 hrs IST

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: Many of the initiatives detailed in the 100-day agenda of the ministry of urban development (MoUD) are welcome. Especially noteworthy are the substantial increase in the funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), and the continued emphasis on some other programmes that are offshoots of some very innovative efforts made by the UPA-I. These can be further scaled up to meet the needs of our growing cities. But the one area in which the ministry has abdicated its larger responsibility to the urban community is in housing where it has restricted its direct efforts to build 65,000 affordable houses for the economically weaker sections and 47,500 dwelling units for slum rehabilitation through the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), an organisation infamous for its inefficiency and corruption, on occasions even rigging the allocations of new flats.

Why is the MoUD’s direct intervention in one of the most important issues facing poor and middle classes—affordable housing—restricted to just one lakh houses in the capital city, when the housing shortage in urban India is estimated to be 24.7 million in 2007? And why is it that the ministry has failed to abide by the norms of the National Housing and Habitat Policy which has envisaged that the role of government will shift from provider to facilitator. Tackling the shortage in urban housing is too big a task, and government agencies can only nibble at the edges as they have been doing for more than half a century. It would be unreasonable to expect such patience from the public at large, as the backlog increases each year. Tackling the urban housing issue should have had much greater priority in the 100-day plan with actionable programmes to overcome current hurdles by encouraging adoption of critical urban reforms relating to municipal laws, building bye laws, easing of procedural and legal frameworks, building efficient property title verification systems and releasing government land for private building—all these measures will help boost private investment in housing. The scarce resources with the government can be best utilised by building infrastructure facilities like water, sanitation, drainage, sewerage, power supply and transport facilities.

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