With its portal on house construction failing to give desired results, the Rural Development Ministry now plans to reach at door steps of rural people to advise them on common practical bottlenecks in constructing and maintaining their houses.
The first interactive session with the stakeholders will be kicked off from Bihar where professionals from the IIT Delhi will provide technical knowledge on housing to the rural people under the Ministry’s ambitious scheme ‘Rural Housing Knowledge Network.’
The move aims to ensure quality construction under the RD Ministry’s flagship scheme, Indira Awas Yojna (IAY). Though the RHKN portal was launched last year for sharing of information between various stakeholders on rural housing, it failed to yield desired result in view of poor response from the rural areas in view of poor accessibility and unawareness.
“The Rural Development Ministry has selected Bihar to implement its ambitious scheme wherein professionals from IIT Delhi will conduct targeted interactions between housing practitioners and IAY homeowners in a talk show/question -answer format so that they can advice,” said a senior official from the Ministry.
He said that it was IIT Delhi which was keen to launch the pilot initiative of the first of these talks from Bihar. “We have already asked the Bihar Government to send its choice of the pilot district and the process of role out in the state” the official added.
The RHKN has been initiated to provide knowledge resources to rural home owners to build safe, sustainable and cost effective houses using conventional and alternative technologies.
The web-based knowledge portal consolidates knowledge on house construction and allied human resources and makes it available to rural households in a easily comprehensible and usable format.
“This is particularly important for addressing common issues in construction practices that leads to houses being left incomplete due to cost overruns as well as poor quality resulting in vulnerability to local disaster risks,” said the official.