Housing Policy in India: Understanding the Missing Links

Abstract

Urban policy, planning and housing are state subjects according to the Constitution of India. However the central government has played a proactive role in matters of housing by formulating policies and programmes, giving directives to the state and allocating funds under the five year plans. Amelioration of housing condition till the late ‘80s was addressed through various programme interventions with defined beneficiaries, annual allocations and numeric targets. The first National Housing Policy that provided a framework for better housing in India was drafted in 1988. Over the years, both housing policies and the approach to housing delivery have undergone a radical paradigm shift: from housing as ‘welfare good and a public responsibility’ to ‘market dynamics with government as facilitator’. The cumulative achievement of housing stock in India, both in quantitative and qualitative terms, since the first plan period is commendable. But the latest official estimate of urban housing shortage stands at 18.78 million with more than 95% of the shortage in the Economically Weaker Section and Low Income Group reflects a crisis in urban housing. As early as the Fourth Five Year Plan (1969–1974), in the context of the housing crisis and proliferation of slums in Indian urban scape, it was noted that failing to achieve a distributed urbanization and stabilization of population at desirable optimum figure in big cities, will make it difficult to control the situation later. However, efforts for distributed and balanced urbanization received little support from programme initiatives and have been almost non-existent in the policy debates and documents.

Annexes

Table 1 Interstate differential in urbanization level in India 1971–2011

Table 2 Size and class wise urban population distribution in India 1951–1971 (in %)

Table 3 State wise expenditure under IDSMT from 1979 to September 2008 (in Rs. Lakhs)

Table 4 Overall progress of BSUP component of JNNURM (state wise)

Table 5 Overall progress of IHSDP component of JNNURM (state wise)