Rajiv Awas Yojana
A house is one of the most basic needs in life. However, it’s not easy to afford one. At least not in India. No surprise why providing affordable housing to every family in need has remained in the priorities of many governments. Today we often hear about PM Modi’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) aimed at eliminating slums from India, but previous government had also nurtured the same dream of slum-free India in the people of this country with its own schemes. In this article we’re going to talk about one such scheme called Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY).
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Rajiv Awas Yojana: An Introduction
RAY was one of the good deeds of previous UPA government. It was launched in 2011 with an aim to provide housing to all by 2022. The objectives of scheme included:
- Infrastructure Improvement: Bringing all the slums within formal system and enabling them to avail the basic amenities and infrastructure available to the rest of the city.
- Affordable Housing: Addressing the challenges of formal system that lead to creation of slums. One of those challenges was unavailability of affordable housing, which government had planned to take on by building a stock of affordable houses. The scheme had a component named Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) under which government was willing to provide financial support at the rate of Rs. 75,000 per EWS/LIG Dwelling Unit (DU) of 21 x 40 sqm in size. Any organization could obtain that support by taking liability to build a minimum of 250 such units under its project(s). According to Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA) 21 such AHP projects were sanctioned across Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan. A total of 24,441 DUs had to be built under those projects.
It was a Central Sponsored program that began in 2013 and government had planned to run it in mission mode until 2022. Site selection was left on to state governments who had to advise the Central government regarding areas of priority. The program aimed to cover one million beneficiaries.
- The Groundwork
Though previous government had planned to run the scheme until 2022, things took a turn and it lost power in 2014. The NDA government that came to power decided to discontinue the program and subsume its liabilities into its own PMAY scheme. So technically RAY lived for one year only (2013 – 2014). During that period a number of things took place:
- Allocation of Funds: A sum of Rs. 32,230 crores had been allocated to the scheme during 12th Five Year Plan. From that amount first installment of Rs. 44.19 crores had also been released for development of AHP projects.
- AHP Houses Built: A total of 4,968 DUs were built under AHP projects by utilizing the first installment of 44 crores. According to MHUPA website 2,432 of those DUs have also been occupied by people
Overall by the end of May a total of 20,954 houses have been built under the scheme (majority of which are actually lying vacant).
Conclusion
The actual picture of this UPA scheme that was started in 2013 looks like this:
| Funds allocated | Rs. 32,330 crore (for five years) |
| Total Houses Built | 20,954 |
| Houses to be Built under AHP | 24,441 |
| Houses Actually Built under AHP | 4,968 (23.7% of total) |
| Houses Occupied | 2,432 (11.6% of total) |
As you can see, the one year picture of scheme doesn’t look too good. It doesn’t look to bad either, when you realize the fact that this was done during the short duration of one year. But the important questions it raises are these: Are government schemes really enough to provide housing for all? Will PMAY be able to do what previous scheme(s) couldn’t? Or will it also go the same way? Now with liabilities of all other housing schemes subsumed into PMAY, all hopes now remain with the PM Modi only. Hopefully his scheme won’t go the same way and majority of Indians will have a house by 2022. It’s a major challenge that he needs to tackle well.
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