Govt Constructs Over 10 Lakh Rural Houses In Record Time

The Department of Rural Development has quietly managed to complete over 10 lakh houses in just under 36 months taking the overall tally of completed houses to over 21.5 lakhs. Now it aims to complete another 23 lakh homes by December 2017 to take the overall tally of rural houses to 44 lakhs.

Of the 10-lakh plus houses recently completed, a large portion of houses include those that were taken up under the Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) and were incomplete as on 1st April 2016. Many of them were incomplete for many years, says a senior official at the ministry of rural development. "Of these, 21.57 lakh houses have been completed so far. This is nearly double of what was being completed each year in the 2012-13 to 2014-15 period," the official said.

Year - Number of IAY Houses completed

2012-13 - 10.80 lakhs

2013-14 - 10.83 lakhs

2014-15 - 11.82 lakhs

2015-16 - 18.03 lakhs

2016-17 (up to 28 January 2017) - 21.57 lakhs

The government now says that sincere efforts are being made to complete the overall target of 33 lakh houses in the current financial year, in partnership with States. It should be noted that on 20th November, 2016, Hon’ble Prime Minister formally launched Pradhan Mantri AwaasYojana (Gramin) - PMAY(G), with an original approval for 33 lakhs new PMAY Gramin houses, which has now been increased to 44 lakhs.

"The targets have been communicated to the States and after following an intensive process of beneficiary selection using SECC ( Socio-Economic Caste Census-2011) and Gram Sabha, housing design typology finalization, finalization of training programme of rural masons and Geo tagging of all currently occupied houses to establish that only poor households have been selected, States have started the registration process for construction and over 14.23 lakh beneficiaries have already been registered so far," an official statement said.

The work on all these houses are expected to be started over the next one month, and completion period for these houses has been brought down to only 12 months with efforts to complete more than 50 per cent of houses in six months. Most of these 44 lakh houses are expected to be completed before December, 2017. Altogether one crore and 33 lakh houses will be completed in three years from 2016-17 to 2018-19, the official said.

Cheaper Home Loans
Recently, Narendra Singh Tomar, the Rural Development Minister had said that in order to ease the EMI burden by ensuring cheap home loans in rural areas, the central government had approved 3 per cent interest subsidy on loans of upto Rs 2 lakh for all households which are not covered under Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana (Grameen). “The interest subvention will not only reduce the equated monthly installment (EMI) burden on the poor but will also help them in further construction or expansion of their current homes,” Tomar had said.

As per the scheme, the National Housing Bank (NHB) would be the implementation body and the government would provide net present value of the interest subsidy of 3 per cent to it. NHB will, in turn, pass it to the primary lending institutions, like scheduled commercial banks, NBFCs and others.

Under the scheme, the government would also take necessary steps for proper convergence with PMAY(G) including technical support to beneficiary through existing arrangements.

Experts say this year’s budget should give a major thrust on real estate housing & infrastructure. The 2017-18 budget should be seen in the backdrop of a tough year for real estate and housing, with the problem of weak sales and high unsold inventory getting further precipitated by demonetisation. "The sale of housing units are reported to have declined by as much as 10 per cent in the six month period ending September 2016. This is worrying. The government should focus on reviving the housing sector in its budget," a sectoral expert said.