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Abstract
The supply of housing, particularly for lower economic households, remains a major challenge in India. Given the vast scale and diversity of the country, implementation of centrally administered housing programmes occurs in varying local contexts, giving rise to significant variations in development on the ground. This research focuses on the ongoing Housing for All 2022 (PMAY) programme, which, with its combination of mass housing as well as assisted self help housing components, claims to address India’s housing shortage in a holistic manner. Statistics on the physical progress of implementation of the PMAY, rank Madhya Pradesh, one of the lesser urbanised states, among the top five states of the country. In this study, the components and structuring of the programme are compared with the experience on implementation from stakeholders and beneficiaries in selected towns of Madhya Pradesh. While the big-city bias of housing programmes is well researched, this case investigates implementation hurdles and means of negotiating them in small and medium towns of India. The paper argues the need to appropriately structure national housing programmes and embed a dialogue between the Centre, State and Urban Local Bodies, to enable context specific implementation for effectively ameliorating the housing shortage of the urban poor.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the officials of the HFA division of the Directorate of Urban Administration and Development of the Government of Madhya Pradesh for sharing their data and their perspectives through interviews progressively over the last three years and households who cooperated during surveys. The author also acknowledges the support of students who assisted in surveys and data compilation works. The author is grateful for the insightful suggestions of the reviewers and editors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Technology Sub-Mission of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation commissioned several projects to National Institutes to work on design of housing in several geo-climatic zones of India in 2016-17. One such study was commissioned to the author's institute and initiated by the author as Principal Investigator. Subsequently these studies have been replaced by a centralised Global Housing Technology Challenge being conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs since 2019. However the data and analyses presented in this paper have not been undertaken or presented in any earlier study.
2 The Census of India has classified towns according to population into six classes as follows: Class 1 towns with more than 1, 00,000 population, Class II towns with 50,000 to 99,999 population, Class III towns with 20,000 to 49,999 population, Class IV towns with 10,000 to 19,999 population, Class V towns with 5000 to 9,999 population, Class VI towns with less than 5,000 population.