|
What’s New in
Habitat?
A decent dwelling is one of the most basic needs besides food and clothing. Unfortunately, a decent shelter is still a distant dream for most rural poor in India. This is exemplified in the 11th five year plan where only 10.97 million houses were constructed against the target of 47.43 million houses under IAY. The number keeps escalating and as estimated in the 12th five year plan a total rural housing shortage of 48.81 Million from 2012-17 will be addressed. However, the plan also does not include greening by way of adopting eco construction practices viz. efficient resources use - water, energy and eco building material and technologies as recommended by MoRD in its report "Greening Rural Development in India".To meet the demand of rural housing innovative approaches have been employed by various social entrepreneurs to meet the demand and promote innovative, eco friendly and low cost housing models in rural areas. Models focusing on lower middle rural customers willing to repay a mortgage/loan have also been tried. However, finding investors/ suitable financial arrangement with reasonable interest rates (ranging from 18 to 30%) are yet to come by. Credit cum Subsidy Schemes:
The part credit - part subsidy scheme (for APL and BPL families) by
state governments of India is an important step re-defining the role of
Government from a ‘provider’ to a ‘facilitator’, as envisaged in the
National Housing Policy. This scheme involves participation of Scheduled
Commercial Banks, Housing Finance Institutions and Housing Boards for
loan provisioning.
At the state level, Government of Madhya Pradesh announced a pilot of "Chief Minister’s Rural Housing Mission" in 2011 to test and verify financing options, design of houses, use of eco building materials, institutional mechanisms, etc for rural housing and habitat. The scheme failed to achieve the desired targets due to lack of coordination between different stakeholders viz. beneficiaries, PRI’s, local banks, revenue department, technical support institutions, etc., delays in bank processing, individual dealing with the beneficiaries and absence of market linkage for eco building material and technologies. Delays in loan/grant disbursal despite sanctioning of loan and grants have also contributed to missing targets. In 2011-2012, out of 124060 cases registered in the scheme in Madhya Pradesh ( www.mmgam.mp.nic.in), 75733 have been received by banks and only 2035 been approved by banks leaving a huge gap.‘Build Together Pay Together’ Development Alternatives (DA) in association with FEM Sustainable Social Solutions initiated an action research project on "credit based eco housing". This model seeks provisioning affordable eco housing for rural poor encompassing infrastructure requirements (social, technological and financial) to scale. Joint liable groups have been constituted for housing prior to bank loan sanctions for ‘build together and pay together’ as a stable peer pressure mechanism. It also incorporated eco friendly construction technologies viz. rat-trap bond for masonry walls, stone patti roofing, micro concrete roofing, etc. The technique resulted in saving approximately 98 mega joules per cum of energy saving and 73 kg/cum of co 2 emissions reduced per house.The grouping system will essentially validate the choice of borrowers, bring in efficiency and co-ordination in the construction process and bring peer-pressure among the group members in the repayment process. The groups formed would be responsible to ‘build together and pay together’ meaning that they will have to take onus of ensuring building progress of other group members and also assume joint liability over other group member repayments. This has resulted in completion of 30 houses in 4 months through this model against 20 eco houses in 15 months. Governments schemes need to be modelled around such credit and subsidy initiatives for successful implementation and greening rural housing. q Amol Mangrulkar References: 2008, Sinha B & Biswas I, Shelter – A big challenge for rural india, S & T for Rural India and Inclusive growth. 2013, working group on Rural Housing for 12th five year plan, Government of India. 2007,"India’s Rural Poor – Why housing isn’t enough to create sustainable communities", India Knowledge@Wharton. www.mmgam.mp.nic.in 2012, Lenka.S & Narayan. R, " Build Together Pay Together – Guide to group level processes for low cost housing benificiaries of Development Alternatives’ habitat program", Bottoms Up Consulting. 2012, Chopra. R, "Greening Rural Development in India", Volume I, UNDP India 2012.
|
