The Central Government aims to provide house to every homeless family by the 75th year of Independence with budgetary provision and dedicated schemes.
The target for rural area includes a pucca house with supply of water, electricity and toilet facility for every BPl family through Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G).
The house with minimum size of 25 sqmt must have cooking space, toilet and bathing area, sources of drinking water and clean fuel for the use of whole family.
The available support for this scheme through convergence of related other schemes is about Rs 1.6 lakh per house along with loan facilities of Rs 70,000 by housing banks.
The unit cost is Rs 1.30 along with Rs 12,000 for toilet under the Swachha Bharat Mission and about Rs 17, 290 under the MGNRGS for 95 days of unskilled work for the house.
It has created hope among rural poor towards a life with dignity and decent living with support of the Central and State Governments by building the most basic necessity of a family. The huge rural housing scheme not only helps the poor but will generate huge employment in rural areas and build basic infrastructure for the poor as boost to rural economy and employment generation.
The Government has also made plan to make available building materials at low cost and skilled masons to meet the huge requirement in the process of construction work. In order to maintain higher level of transparency in the implementation of the scheme the information technology, space technology, geo-tagging have been used to identify the beneficiaries and monitor the progress of the work and payment through direct benefit transfer (DBT) with Aadhara and mobile linked bank account.
The cost of the house is shared between the Centre and the State in 60: 40 ratio, and the State Government has a major role in grounding the scheme. The poor States such as Odisha with maximum people under BPl category in rural areas must use this as an opportunity to build the rural Odisha by making all efforts. But unfortunately, many of the Central schemes for the poor such as rural housing (PMAY-G) are not being effectively implemented due to lack of political will of the State Government and the beneficiaries are also not properly informed about such schemes. It is the primary responsibility of the State
Government to select genuine beneficiaries through Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011 (SECC-2011) and affirmation by Gramasbha, and ensure homestead land and make the process complete through local level officials responsible for the implementation of the scheme.
The State Government should help the beneficiaries to have Aadhara card, bank account, mobile no and land patta to become eligible fo the scheme as a majority of the rural poor are landless, illiterate and lack information about such schemes. A section of the poor in interior parts have no homestead land of their own with record of rights, bank account and access to communication with local offices.
They are also not organized to share information or to take up their issues with the local authority as largely they depend on local middlemen to access Government schemes. The political parties and trade unions and NGOs have made very little effort to organize these sections of rural poor and help them to get their genuine rights, entitlement and benefits under different schemes and programmes. This leads to huge corruption and limiting the access of beneficiaries which are major reasons of non-implementation of pro-poor schemes. The Panchyatraj institutions along with block level officials have a major role in identifying beneficiaries through verification of the list provided by the Government of India based on SECC 2011. The Panchayat has the power to exclude or include beneficiaries and take a facilitating role in ensuring the implementation of the scheme.
It has been observed through interaction with beneficiaries in many parts of the State and monitoring of media reports that there is lack of basic awareness among the beneficiaries, basic infrastructure such as homestead land, absence of convergence of schemes and coordination of various departments to ensure implementation of a completely successful project.
It is fact that rural housing scheme was started in 1980s as Indira Awas Yojana but the last 25 years witness huge failure in reaching the target especially in Odisha. The homelessness condition of rural households of Odisha is very well exposed in the Census of 2011. Not only house but in other basic amenities such as electricity, drinking water, sanitation, toilet and communication, the State is below the national average and behind many developed States of the country.
The poor beneficiaries of housing schemes in rural villages are mostly from the marginalized sections, socially and economically powerless illiterate persons, routinely visiting Panchayats and block offices sacrificing the wage of that day. They are indirectly forced to bribe the local elected representatives and officials to get the scheme where as it is the duty of the service providers to reach to the beneficiaries and deliver the service in most transparent manner. Majority of the beneficiaries are not informed about the process and criteria. Rather a general perception is that everything depends on the local officials and ruling party representatives to avail the scheme. The scheme says the beneficiaries on his/her own effort have to construct the house in three instalments within a period of 18 months from the date of first instalment and no contractor will be engaged in the construction work.
The meeting of Principal Secretaries of States on the issues of PMAY (Gramin) in April by the Union Ministry of Rural Development revealed that along with other administrative issues, land to the landless is a major challenge for housing and the State Government has to ensure this. It is estimated that out of 4.03 crore households identified in the SECC 2011, 2.39 crore were recognized after verification by Gram Sabha but many of the States have not completed their verification though Odisha has completed 65 per cent of the verification, 60 per cent of registration and 100 per cent of geo-tagging. It targets to achieve 100 per cent which is quite encouraging. The first instalment for more than 50 per cent of the beneficiaries has been released by the Centre.
It is important to note that added to the PMAY (Gramin), the State Government has four more rural housing schemes such as Biju Pucca Ghara Yojana (BPGY) normal and special, Biju housing for mining area in eight mining affected districts and Buju housing for construction workers.
So the scope of housing is wide for the rural poor households affected by natural calamities, communal violence, poor people in mining areas and construction workers but it is being reported that the funds under the State schemes have been largely unspent, particularly for mining affected people and construction workers. There are Dalit and Adivasi hamlets and slums in interior parts and mining affected areas of the State where people live in sub-human condition without basic minimum for life such as housing and drinking water, electricity and toilet facilities.
The need of the hour is to examine why implementation of schemes are getting delayed lest it would be difficult to achieve the target of housing for all in a poor State like Odisha.
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