India’s untold story about the precarious state of affairs of its urban planning and housing infrastructure made its debut with the tragic exodus of millions of poor, angry, grief-stricken people from host states to havens in home states.
The viral images of migrants (an estimated 30 million) taking the long walk back home, clutching to their belongings during lockdown due to job, income and food insecurity, unstable housing and fear psychosis, point out to the pathetic failure of the public & private sector employers, industrialists and the government; who failed to provide basic rights and access to economic, social and health security.
The Narendra Modi government shocked at the apathy of the migrants cleared a plan to build subsidised rental dwellings in cities for 350,000 workers under the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes scheme (AHRCs). The scheme is a part of the Centre’s flagship housing programme for the urban poor Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U), which plans to build 20 million homes by 2022.
Where India failed
India’s ugly reality of the condition of the urban poor emanates from the archetypal mindset of Indians that urban housing is meant for the middle-class, upper-class and the elites, not for the poor.
The poor people (treated as Dharti ke Bojh) who come to cities for good jobs and a better life are destined to live in hovels and slum-like tenements in inhuman conditions; that lack basic sanitation, water services, ventilation and abundant green spaces.
The social and economic costs of these dingy settlements are high as maintaining social distancing and staying hygienic have become a far cry. Owing to this, the poor inhabitants are at a far greater risk of contracting the deadly virus.
It is the responsibility of the society to find a proper, inhabitable home for those people on whose shoulders the nation’s progress and development rests. America formulated laws in the 1900s after the American Civil War to safeguard the lives and rights of its labour force. After more than a century later, India is yet to do so.
India’s post-independence visionary gamble
India’s impotency to check the incessant flow of migrants from villages to cities and urban areas is a big reason for mushrooming of slums and chawls in big cities. Mahatma Gandhi once said that “The future of India lies in villages”. Gandhi believed that it was impractical for India’s cities to accommodate the explosive population in a dignified way. He admitted that there should be an ever-expanding scientific and technical expertise in healthcare and food production in villages and access to educational and economic opportunities.
Gandhi’s vision was however squashed by Pandit Nehru who believed that an independent India relied on rapid industrialization and building of material prosperity. Nehru’s philosophy was followed by successive governments who believed that incessant mass construction of high-rises on every underutilized urban site would increase supply and reduce the cost of homeownership. However, that philosophy was reserved only for the urban middle-class and the upper echelons.
This paraplegic vision and narcolepsy displayed by former governments have undermined the value of Indian cities and made them dysfunctional. Lack of economic activity in villages have opened the floodgates and led to rampant spillage of rural population into cities, leading to unchecked proliferation of unplanned, unhygienic urban dwellings.
The tonic India needs
It doesn’t require a second thought to understand that the resolve with which the poor migrants toiled their way home, never to return would crumble within a few weeks; lack of decent work, low productivity and insufficient wages would force them to take the tiring journey back to their workplaces.
But, if we as a society take sadistic pleasure out of their fate and lick our chops for our greedy gains, India’s dream to be the next China would be lost, if not forever. For India to get past the “developing” tag, it has to rethink the housing situation and close the gap between classes by giving workers low-cost homes.
India is sitting on a huge portfolio of 1.3 million unsold homes. That’s billions of dollars in lost revenue as most of the homes are crippled by delays and execution risks. Until now, real estate developers and the government have focused on housing units meant for the middle-class and elite. Homes for workers were considered an unprofitable initiative and thus never built.
A collective effort to build workers’ housing is the need of the hour now to enable the transition of migrant workers and their families into an improved standard of living.
Cheap land parcels, tax breaks and fiscal support should be provided to real estate developers to build affordable rental housing for workers. A good rental yield assurance from the government will encourage investors to finance this asset class. This will pour capital into the beleaguered real estate sector, and also generate wage income.
Equality and social justice in cities and urban areas can only be achieved when employers and employees can live cheek by jowl; and the dominant class takes cognizance of the living conditions of its employees. The affordable rental housing scheme by the government is the right step in this direction.
Cheap housing facilities will give workers a sense of security that they can live in urban settlements with their families. The shift of workers from urban slums to formal housing facilities will provide India with a permanent labour workforce and balance the gender ratio of workers in cities, which till date is mostly masculine. The enormous pool of skills that can be tapped from this resident population can fuel the next level of growth for our nation.
And this will only be possible through appropriate design and robust planning of the AHRC.
While this housing initiative is appreciated for introducing a paradigm shift in urban infrastructure and city planning, the implementation of this scheme within a fixed time period can be a challenge.
To ensure that this game-changing initiative remains a glowing example for subsequent generations down the decades, the government has to do extensive research and development leveraging the best experts of urban planning at hand; so that this well-intentioned idea of creating a healthy and secure labour force through affordable rental housing doesn’t succumb to another migrant crisis.
