For Election Riches, UPA Plans Houses for the Poor

The government plans to launch an ambitious housing scheme to woo the urban poor, ahead of the next general elections. 

The housing and urban poverty alleviation ministry has tapped several central ministries and agencies to prepare a comprehensive package, which will include building high-rise apartments for the urban poor on land owned by central agencies such as the railways and defence; doing away with the cap of . 80,000 on home loans under the JNNURM scheme; incentivising construction of homes for the poor; and making it mandatory for builders to reserve 35% of houses in any housing complex for economically weaker sections and lower income groups under the Rajiv Awas Yojana. Looking at Ways to Reclaim the Urban Voters 
"Consultations with various arms of the government are on. This will be another game-changer as millions of poor will benefit," said Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Ajay Maken. This move comes in the run-up to the next general elections. Congress had done very well in the urban areas in the 2009 elections, but the government's image has been severely hit by corruption scandals and the perception that it has not done enough in the last few years. A string of defeats suffered by the party in the civic polls of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and other cities post-2009 has worried its leadership, which is looking at ways to reclaim the urban vote. The party had launched the 'Ghar Nu Ghar' affordable housing scheme for women ahead of the Gujarat elections that saw nearly 28 lakh women sign up. "The queues in Gujarat showed us the appetite for affordable homes. Steep real estate prices and expensive loans have discouraged people from buying homes — by far the biggest investment in their lifetime," said a housing ministry official. Congress has decided to make the direct cash transfer scheme — a programme that gives the poor access to welfare scheme funds directly, using the electronically-enabled Aadhaar card — a major plank of its election strategy. The Food Security Bill and the Land Rehabilitation Bill are also expected to form a part of its election strategy. While housing for the urban poor is a vote-catching proposition, it is a state subject and the 12-18 months left before the next elections is too short a period for construction to happen. "We can't start constructing houses before polls, but we can launch the schemes," said Maken. The minister said the proposed package wasn't just a political move, and added that it was imperative for the government to provide housing for theurban poor. "We are talking about almost 50% of our population, of which 26% live in slums. I think we need to give them some good programmes and policies, which we are working through our re-christened Rajiv Awas Yojana.We are making a number of changes so that this scheme becomes more effective and meaningful." The government has calculated that there is a shortfall of 18.78 million homes in the country, mostly in the low-income category. The poor in India usually live in unregulated areas, especially slum developments in big cities such as Delhi and Mumbai. Delhi alone has more than 50,000 slums units on railway land and between 5,000 and 10,000 on defence properties. Maken's ministry has had a series of discussions with the railways and defence ministries. "We are looking at how, through Rajiv Awas Yojana, we can straightaway start with slum eradication or improvement of slums or housing in the central government agency areas," Maken said. In addition, the railways and defence establishments have huge tracts of surplus, unutilised land all over the country, especially in habitable regions, and the idea is to develop homes and colonies on them. The minister said the government had failed to achieve certain goals in the first phase of JNNURM. But the gaps will be plugged this time around to make it more relevant. For instance, an anomaly in the first phase of JNNURM was that under the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP), in small towns, the home loan limit was Rs 80,000 per house, which was too small. That is why many of the IHSDP programmes could not succeed. The government now plans to remove this artificial restriction on the amount in the second phase of Rajiv Awas Yojana and make loans available on actuals. "We would like to be more realistic and in terms of actuals, we would like to give 50% or 80% of the amount which would be spent," Maken said, adding he was expecting the Planning Commission to agree to this proposal. Also, in the Rajiv Awas Yojana, one of the mandatory conditions would be that 35% of the houses for any housing complex should be reserved for EWS and LIG. "This we want them to be over and above what has been given to them. We should give them extra FSI and also give transfer of development rights (TDR) to developers so that it incentivises the construction of EWS housing," Maken said. He also said the government will relax FSI norms in cities to allow vertical developments. "We feel that unless you are liberal with the FSI and population density norms, you can't have cities that would meet the housing needs of people, particularly the poor," said the minister.

POLL VAULT: Maken