India fails dismally to provide housing for poor

India's efforts to provide decent homes for the millions of people living in slums across the country have been worse than pathetic, new figures released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation have revealed (to nobody's surprise).

As the Hindu rightly points out in a staff editorial, "This calls for a serious questioning of the approach and capabilities of government institutions to deliver badly needed social housing."

According to the paper, the Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP), launched in 2008 to provide an interest subsidy of five per cent on a loan amount of around $2500 to the economically weaker section and lower income group, has so far benefited only 7,805 people of the 2012 target of 310,000. Meanwhile, out of $300 million allotted for the scheme, only about $1.5 million has been used.

Similarly, the flagship Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which has a provision of around $10 billion for the period 2005-2012, is doing no better, the paper said. Only about 30 percent of houses sanctioned for the poor under this scheme have been built.

The lack of funds is often projected as the main reason for the dismal situation of social housing. It is now evident that, more than funds, poor conceptualisation of policies, procedural inefficiency, and ineffective construction practices are the major impediments, says the Hindu.

Policymakers assumed that the poor had access to land and needed only financial support to build their houses. As a result, the focus was on making credit easily available. However, the reality is that neither cheap land nor affordable houses are in good supply. If the demand for social housing is to be met, in addition to rectifying policies, construction practices and performance regimes need to be greatly improved. In particular, State-level housing boards must improve their capacity in order to fully utilise the available funds and deliver more houses.