ANNOUNCEMENTS
With a validated housing demand of about 1.12 crore in urban areas in 2020, India has continued to face a massive housing shortage with increasing urbanization and migration. Currently, under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), a national housing programme launched in 2015, several notable measures have also been taken at the state-level. Some states even rolled out new housing programmes in alignment with the national housing programme. Telangana, being one such state, presented a unique model of providing for a free dwelling unit to all houseless BPL families in the state under the Dignity Housing Scheme. However, the state actually presented a contrasting picture by rolling out a massive housing scheme on one hand, while on the other, it notified orders to dispose-off incomplete and unfit for occupation projects under Rajiv Swagruha, a previous housing scheme, as non-performing assets in an open auction (Hindu, 2020). Such a conflicting picture posed a crucial question. Is the housing, being constructed under the central and state government-led policies and programmes, ‘adequate’? This study thus analyses the recent state government initiatives in the affordable housing environment of Telangana and Hyderabad, the capital city in particular. It specifically focuses on evaluating the Dignity Housing Scheme using state-level and city level assessment frameworks developed on the basis of the ‘Adequate Housing Framework’, as suggested by UN Habitat, 2009. The findings of the study revealed that the Scheme failed to provide housing that is ‘adequate’, since it did not satisfy four out of the six minimum criteria for ‘adequate housing’, explored in this study from a total of seven. The study further validates the need to focus on in-situ development in future housing policies and programmes, owing to the findings that suggested better adherence to the criteria of ‘adequacy’ in in-situ projects.
Keywords: adequate housing, security of tenure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location, in-situ, greenfield.
