Will the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation’s ambitious `75,000-crore plan cutting across major cities to make India slum-free work on the ground?
The nation has an estimated 100 million slum dwellers though the first step of the programme will look at 26 cities, including Hyderabad, Raipur, Guhawati and Bhubaneshwar.
The Delhi state government is leading the way and is planning to construct a 12-storey-tall housing complexes in four districts of the NCR.
Already, nearly 10,000 flats have been constructed with each slum dweller in the BPL category being provided a minimum of 24 square metre of dwelling space.
The price of the house is yet to be finalised but ministry sources believe they will cost anything between `5 to `7 lakh. The Delhi Urban Slum Shelter Improvement Board has identified those eligible for relocation from shanties to these flats by surveying 46 slums in Delhi.
Housing expert Dunnu Roy questions why the Delhi state government has identified only 46 slums since their records show that the city has 860 slums. Mr Roy feels the “present criteria of selection being used in Delhi is arbitrary and selective and is using a cut off percentage of 2007 not taking those who have moved here later.”
He also questions whether 12-storey complexes will work for BPL families.
“If they install lifts, who is going to pay for their maintenance. This model has been tried and abandoned in the UP and US, how is it expected to work here?” he asked.
Maharashtra leads the country in slum population and their Slum Rehabilitation Authority has already constructed 1.47 lakh tenements with another 1.70 lakh under construction.
A Mumbai bureaucrat believes the pledge of a slum-free India will be difficult to fulfil since the slum population in Mumbai has gone up from 58 lakh in 2001 to 70 lakh in 2011.
Housing experts believe the cheaper alternative would have been to have made an allotment of land and then allowed the slum dweller to have done his own construction.
Experts led by Prof. Amitabh Kundu, dean of social science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, maintains that this present PPP model will allow slum land to be used for commercial or even high end residential development.
The government is planning to introduce a new law which will put the onus on the states to give property right to slum dwellers either in-situ or in an alternate area before evicting them.
The move to rope in states to meet the huge housing shortage (26 million units) came after the Centre realised that JNNURM efforts could ensure housing to only 1-2 million people.