The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, a scheme of housing for all by 2022, has been launched in June last by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The scheme aims to construct more than two crore houses within a span of next seven years, especially for the poor, economically weaker sections and low income group people living in urban areas of the country.
The scheme has provision to make available housing loan and interest subsidy for beneficiaries for a period of 15 years. The house for poor will be allotted in the name of women in family as a pro-women scheme and the ground floor of the allotted house will be given to people with disability and the elderly as well.
The scheme has also provision of support to urban poor for construction of their own house or for renovation of their old house. It is also said that eco-friendly technology will be used in the construction of the building. In the coming seven years, all the urban areas of the country will be developed with basic infrastructure and amenities in three phases till 2022. This has created hope among urban poor to have a house of own to live with dignity. It is the role of the State Government, especially the Department of Urban and Housing Development, to ground the ambitious scheme for the urban poor.
The housing project will create urban employment, civil and social amenities and infrastructure for the urban people and thus improve the quality of life of the people in urban areas by providing them a security for family with decent shelter as a basic requirement for a dignified life. The vision for a slum free city and housing for all also includes to improve the quality of life of all irrespective of economic class and social groups by ensuring accessible health and education, drinking water, electricity, controlling all kinds of noise, air and water pollution, garbage management, maintaining law and order and overall social environment required for a healthy and peaceful life.
The children and women should enjoy a better social and ecological environment. The economic liberation process globally has brought market forces to become partner of the housing projects for the poor and the Government has been engaged in bringing necessary policy, legal and administrative reforms to facilitate the process further. The housing and real estate projects are becoming important contributor to GDP and economic growth of the country.
For the last few years, there has been a growing trend of urbanization as rural areas are converting with facilities of urban locations. This has brought new challenges for the urban administration. The urban areas have been facing the problem of pollution, internal mobility, road traffic, waste management, law and order and also growing number of slums which are a major challenge in building clean cities.
The emerging urban locations are coming up due to opening of Government and private offices, mining and industrial hubs, marketing areas, education and health service locations which are source of employment and livelihood for poor people migrating from villages. These poor constitute a major part of the urban population who also belong to weaker section of the society and mostly low paid workers.
They have no financial capacity to build a house of their own for shelter. There has been huge increase in urban land cost, building materials, household equipment, doubtful role of revenue authority, cheating by corrupt builders and land mafia and the most disturbing and rigid process of approval of plans. All these make a house almost a day dream for the urban poor.
India has 4,041 statutory towns with 2,613 slums with a population of about seven crore. Odisha has 107 statutory towns having 76 slums with a population of 16 lakh. All slums in Odisha are yet to be notified as slums. Odisha has a share of 2.4 per cent of the total slum population of the country where as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, UP, Tamil Nadu and MP have larger shares of slum population.
Odisha has been changing its urban face with urban areas increasing and urban population also on the rise. There are 223 statutory and census towns, three municipal corporations, 37 municipalities and 63 Notified Area Council (NAC) in the State. Though the extent of urbanization in Odisha has been relatively low which is around 17 per cent as equated to the national average of 30 per cent but still there has been considerable growth of urban areas which need timely attention of the Government.
As per 2011 Census, about 70 lakh people live in urban areas of the State out of which ten lakh are Scheduled Castes and six lakh are Scheduled Tribes. The urban population has increased by 27 per cent within the last decade. The sex ratio for urban area is 932 and 989 for rural areas. About 50 per cent of the urban population lives in municipalities whereas the rest lives in municipal corporations and NACs in equal percentage. With continued rural and urban gap in many respects, every day people from villages are coming to urban locations in search of livelihood.
Students and youths are coming for education and many people are coming for healthcare as the cities are having good health and educational infrastructure and communication facilities. Almost all the major Government offices are located in urban locations, mostly in cities, which receive a host of visitors for different purposes every day. The people displaced by mining and industrial projects are joined in urban locations as better rehabilitation points.
It has been observed that the quality of basic services in existing as well as emerging urban areas has not improved to meet the basic requirements of the people. Specially the poor in slums and city outskirts are suffering with shortage of basic requirements such as drinking water, sanitation and transport facility to travel from outside the city to different places within the city. There has been growing unauthorized occupants of public land.
There are upcoming urban areas with a population predominantly of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, minority and other vulnerable sections, homeless and migrant workers who need more attention of the Government to ensure housing for them. It has been observed that there has been very insignificant attention given to the issues of housing for the urban poor by the Government.
The most popular housing scheme for the poor Indira AwasYojana (IAY) is meant for rural poor and there has been visible absence of popular housing scheme for urban poor. The Rajiv AwasYojana has very selective impact on the urban poor and covers a very minimal part of the homeless in cities.
The municipal administrations have a major role in identifying the prospective beneficiaries by involving the local leaders of urban governance, urban local self-bodies, but unfortunately there has been huge corruption and nepotism in identification of beneficiaries and many genuine beneficiaries are left out in the process. Procedures should to be followed in the process of beneficiary selection for housing projects. It has been reported in the media that there was huge corruption in Rajiv Awas Yojana in the State and the same should not be repeated in case of Pradhan Mantri AwasYojana. The Government of Odisha should ensure the genuine beneficiaries avail the benefits of the scheme in a transparent manner.
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