Affordable housing: Govt of India "shifts" focus from poor to middle classes, says foremost urban, housing expert

In a scathing critique of the Union budget 2017-18, India’s foremost urban development and housing expert Prof Amitabh Kundu has said that failure of the focus on affordable housing “worries him”. Pointing out that Arun Jaitley in his speech said this is as “a major area of concern”, Kundu said, there is a failure to understand that “there are not many takers for loans” for affordable housing.
In an email alert to Counterview, Kundu said, “The poor are not coming forward to take the loan of Rs 3 lakh which the government has announced. They revised it from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh generally and for the low income groups from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, but still not many people from those sections are coming in.”
The poor, he said, “cannot repay even monthly installments for the Rs 3 lakh loan; even though they pay only 2% interest and the government pays 5% of the amount, the installment still comes to Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,000 per month. The poor, who have a monthly income of Rs 6,000 per household, can't pay Rs 2,000 for a housing loan.”
Hinting that the aim appears to appease the middle classes, Kundu further said, “Modi has announced housing loans up to Rs 9 lakh will get a subsidy of 4% now, and loans up to Rs 12 lakh will get a subsidy of 3%. So, now that you have hiked the loan to Rs 12 lakh, you find the middle class grabbing this opportunity.”
Pointing out that this suggests, whole logic appears to be “absurd” and the Government of India’s “focus has changed”, Kundu said, it has “shifted from the poor to the housing sector. A lot of houses that are lying vacant, the middle class will go and buy those.”
“They will get Rs 1 lakh subsidy for it”, underlined Kundu, adding, “The poor can't even pay the installments for Rs 3 lakh loan. So, all these announcements – no tax for builders until the project is completed, capital gains tax exemption – it is all for the middle class and the upper middle class…The thrust in the PMAY on the poor is now diluted.”
Kundu further said, an option now opened up for a person from the middle class is to build a house for Rs 30 lakh after taking a Rs 12 lakh loan, on which he will get this subsidy, as he is “not barred from getting this subsidy.” He added, “You are helping the middle class buy those houses. It is totally the housing sector lobby that has prevailed.”
Pointing towards the shortage in housing for poor, as of today, is 20 million, Kundu – who headed the Technical Advisory Committee on Housing Start up Index at the RBI and the Committee to Estimate Shortage of Affordable Housing and as the Committee to Estimate Shortage of Affordable Housing, Government of India – said, as chairman of the housing committee, he knew, as many as 11 million houses were lying vacant.
“So more than 50% of the shortage is already available”, he said, adding, “All you have to do is to make sure that the vacant houses are brought to the market. Instead of doing that, you are facilitating the building of more vacant houses.”

Pointing out that the Housing Shortage Committee had estimated a shortage of 95% houses for the economically weaker sections and low income groups, Kundu said, “You can't have only 5% of the total housing expenditure coming from the public sector and 95% from the private sector if the target is low income groups and economically weaker sections.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog