Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Developing Cities


Indian population is at a staggering figure of 105 million and is likely to be 1.5 times the current by 2050 i .e somewhere around 150 millions and that too depends on the success of our family planning pro grammes run by Ministry of Child and Maternal care.
We have many a times heard about the demographic dividend which may be reaped out of our growing population but has any of our so called policy makers(I coin a better word "The Futurist") thought that we are also going to get pressurized 1.5 times for basic amenities such as food,employment,housing...This post of mine is dedicated to one such problem "AFFORDABLE HOUSING".
Current statistics reveal that we are deficit by 22 million in this sector and strikingly 17 million out of 22 million is in urban sector.What are the so called futurist doing.Do they have plans in their repertory. And if they do have ,are the sufficient enough to sustain this water tight situation .With inflow of big bucks in real estate their is ample reason to worry, as I fear not enough brains devoted to tackle the problem of social housing for middle and lower middle class population.
Its for sure that the middle class or lower middle class population is not going to get shelter in the residential edifice's made by THE DLF's ,THE SAHARA' s, THE OMAXE's ...... This crowd is going to venture in housing unit that are affordable for them and pathetically none is available.
No builder or developer have desire to develop affordable housing,because simply he can't.Increase in price of land leaves builder no scope for community service.So,where is the respite.
The last destination alloted for mercy in democracy is government.Now a million dollar question arises that how can government help.Government should provide tax holidays to builder interested in affordable housing.Secondly,it(government) can release extra acres of land(to builders devoted toward AH) for commercial project thereby providing compensation for financial losses.

Here itself one more important issue of urbanization comes in picture because ultimately we are encouraging it.Economist are of opinion that urbanization is inevitable.But should it be licensed to be all and end all.Some modern thinker are of opinion that stop romancing with countryside,they are ultimately going to migrate to cities,their exodus is going to continue.

I try to visualize a probable and a feasible solution to two interrelated problem of affordable housing and urbanization coupled with spread of industrial belt into the territory of agriculture zone.
All the above listed activities are intermingled and each try to interfere in others domain.SEZ try to cross its boundary and occupy agricultural land while affordable housing try to crave its way through SEZ as people residing in it are employed in SEZ itself.So, a balance is sought after.
A three tier development should be made operational for all future planning.Satellite land planning custom should be encouraged in such a manner that terrain having low productivity should be used to form SEZ.Its one side should be reserved for agricultural activities and other side for affordable housing.With industries sand witched between housing unit and agricultural terrain,it will provide equal opportunities to both urban and rural population,thereby restricting their exodus.

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