National housing waiting list is through the roof

Incidentally, both the rural and urban components of the PMAY are driven by the Centre, not just because it foots 60% of the cost, but also because of the obvious political mileage

“Even a landless labourer in any village can check on the internet when he will get a house from us,” says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary of the central government’s rural development ministry.
 
By the end of March 2019, just before the general elections to the Lok Sabha, Sinha’s ministry aims to deliver 10 million of those houses, all of them meant for those who would find it impossible to get one on their own steam. It would make the largest possible dent in the housing shortage in the country, estimated at rural areas to be a little less than 30 million. While the numbers the secretary dishes out are far more impressive than those generated for the urban areas where progress has been modest principally because of land constraints, it is the permanent waiting list for houses, available on the internet, which is striking. Incidentally both the rural and urban components of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana are driven by the Centre, not just because it foots 60 per cent of the cost, but also because of the obvious political mileage. 
 
About the list, Sinha explains it became possible to generate one as the rural development ministry was able to reach out to all the populated gram panchayats across the country, before it launched the Awas Yojana. While the decadal Census of 2011 came up with the number of panchayats at 2.74 lakh (274,000), the Socio-Economic and Caste Census whittled down the number to 2.42 lakh (242,000). The ministry officials asked each of those panchayats a simple question. How many families in the panchayat didn’t own a pucca house? There is a yardstick which determines what constitutes a pucca house. “For each panchayat, the list was made available with the gram sabha. We collected those and displayed it on our website,” he says. Of the 2.12 million beneficiaries listed by the ministry as of December 2017 are also landless labourers who have no land to offer for building a house, and for whom the state will procure a piece. 
 
Their names now figure on a permanent wait-list drawn up at the national level, a most unusual compilation for a country beset with a long history of housing shortage. It does not just provide comfort to those who feature there, but it also ensures the states have a ready list of the households to be covered under the scheme in subsequent years and provides warning about the money needed to finance those. It sets an expected date by which the family can hope to get a house. For a country with a per capita income of $1,588 a year (Central Statistics Office data) spread out in a 1.2 billion population, this is a big deal. As of now, Sinha admits those dates are very broadly indicative, chiefly because it takes a lot of time to build the houses. One of the shortages India faces is that of masons. Sinha’s ministry has begun the job of training them too, with the support of the skills ministry, to quicken the pace of construction.
 
Till November this year, only about a million houses have been built in one and a half years since April 2016 when the scheme was launched. Mason shortage in rural areas has been one of the primary constraints; the other is over-reliance on one ministry at the Centre to deliver results in such a tight schedule. The current pace is roughly the same as that of Indira Awaas Yojana of the previous government which the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin replaced. Sinha’s dashboard shows he expects the number of houses built to shoot up to 5.1 million in just another four months, end of March 2018. “It is achievable, according to my current progress report,” he says. Once those on the list progress to get a house, they will figure in another public list. They will be photographed standing before their house with the latitude and longitude coordinates, in addition to the old fashioned address system.
 
Yet experts like former chairman of National Housing Bank, Raj Vikash Verma, say, “Rural housing has progressed phenomenally, but still depends on the government excessively as of now.” Verma points to the limited offtake from the interest subsidy scheme the Centre drew up in January this year to supplement the Awaas Yojana, to make the point that non-governmental support is thin on the ground. The subsidy is open to every rural household who is better off than those on Sinha’s waiting list. They can construct new houses or add to their existing pucca houses where the subsidy would be available for loans of up to Rs 2 lakh. The houses under Pradan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana get a smaller funding support of up to Rs 1.20 lakh to build at least 25 sq metre unit. It has yet to see much traction, one of the reasons why the Cabinet could expand the size limit for each house, soon. Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in India, says the heavy lifting by the government could reduce and the waiting list pruned faster if the government allowed prefabricated houses to be built wherever it is possible. “The private sector could come in to build those with the same margins,” he says. 
 

However, Amitabh Kundu, who headed the government appointe the committee to estimate shortage of affordable housing and now a visiting fellow at RIS, is not convinced that is the best way to go. “Larger plot sizes and prefabricated houses would be self defeating as their construction costs would make it unviable for the poorest to provide their share. They would lose out,” he says.
 
Sinha is also gung-ho about another internet innovation of the ministry; the geotagging of the houses at every stage, from the existing dilapidated condition across each stage to the final product a few months later. The software allows ministry officials to track the progress of construction of each house using satellite data. “I can walk into any village in India and just use an app on my mobile to track the pace of work there,” the secretary says. There is no need for anyone to accompany me with files, he says.
 
Unfortunately despite the rich data, those cannot be used to confer legal ownership of the houses to the new owners. S Chockalingam, divisional commissioner, Pune, who has been one of India’s intrepid moderniser of land records, says the data put up by the rural development ministry can only be useful for their internal monitoring, but would not pass muster in a court case. Those still depend on the traditional system. But those on the waiting list would not be too bothered by such hindrances, as of now. 
 
Verma and Kundu agree that irrespective of size it would be the most ambitious housing programme, globally. Even as the government’s skill programme to educate Indians is finding it difficult to create traction, the asset building programme has gathered far more pace.