Introduction
Estimates say that among the total population of 1.21 billion in India, approximately 377 million people reside in urban areas. As more than 10 million people are moving to cities and towns from rural areas every year, it is expected that the urban population will surge to about 600 million by 2031. In addition, it is estimated that urbanisation is likely to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.1 per cent, which will be almost double the growth rate of China.
The problem of messy or disordered urbanisation arose due to the lack of urban centres that promise better prospects than most cities and towns. This is evident from the fact that people living in urban slums and sprawls amounted to almost 65.5 million according to the country’s 2011 Census.
‘Hidden’ Urbanisation
The World Bank’s Agglomeration Index, a globally applicable alternative measure of urban concentration, states that the proportion of population living in areas with features of urban cities in 2010 was 55.3 per cent compared to an official urban proportion of the population of over 31 per cent, suggesting the existence of considerable hidden urbanisation.
This population, which is mostly not included by official data, generally resides on the borders of major cities. It is seen that this hidden urbanisation is indicative of the failure to effectively address congestion problems that are caused from the pressure of urban populations on infrastructure, basic services, land, housing and the environment.
Keeping this situation in mind, it is necessary to bridge this gap in the urban housing. According to the Economic Survey of India, it is necessary to address the problems of significant segment of population including EWS (economically weaker sections) and LIG (lower income groups) which amount to 95.6 per cent of lack of the urban housing.
In India, the housing shortage has reached 18.78 million due to the rapid increase in urbanisation. As around 56 per cent of households in urban India now have four or less members and smaller families have become a trend, the demand for housing in urban areas has increased tremendously.
In India, even as the number of households kicked up by 60 million between 2001 and 2011, there has been an increase in the number of houses by almost 81 million at the same time.
However, the recent official Economic Survey reveals the shortage of around 20 million homes in India. The reason behind this is that only middle-income and affluent population has been the focus of builders, resulting in soaring the prices of homes over few decades.
Challenges
Even as the lack of availability of land and soaring prices of the same have been the major supply-side constraints in providing low-cost and affordable housing, the demand has been increasing due to the increasing urbanisation.
Private players in real estate developers have mainly focused on luxury, high-end and upper-mid housing segment because of the higher returns from such projects.
Furthermore, high gestation period of housing projects, limited and expensive capital, spiralling land and construction costs, high fees and taxes as well as unfavourable development norms are some of the issues that are the mainly restricting the expected increase in housing stock in India.
Conclusion
The current five-year plan focuses to increase the living conditions in urban spaces by virtue of smart city programmes.
The success in providing affordable housing will only be achieved by efforts on land and housing policy reforms, allocation of power to urban local bodies, nurturing innovative housing finance and the decline in project costs and schedule overruns.
With the aim of providing better facilities to citizens, the government needs to opt for planned urbanisation and other initiatives so that slums could be eradicated and suitable opportunities for employment is provided, especially for the marginalised section of the society.