AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR THE WEAKER SECTION IN NAGPUR CITY

Abstract

Apart from food and clothes, housing is the basic necessity of humans, which not only protects him from the surrounding adverse conditions, but also gives a sense of well being and courage to develop further. The issues of providing housing to all the population is not a challenge only in Indian context but throughout the world. Moreover, recent developments on the industrial and economic fronts have augmented the rates of migration. Besides, this migration is unidirectional, wherein the people move from the rural to urban area. In last few decades, this movement has always seen an upward trend adding enormous pressure on the receiving community as well as the Governing bodies in the urban area. Often, it has been witnessed that the people, especially belonging to the weaker sections end up in slums. However, such regular addition of people in the slums makes their life miserable. Since, these people are part of the society, the local as well as Central Governments have to proactively make necessary arrangements for their living as well as other amenities like electricity, water, and further basic infrastructure need to support their lives. In the backdrop of above information, often the government floats housing schemes that are affordable to people, especially those belonging to the weaker sections. Presently, the world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in the history of mankind. In 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population was living in towns and cities. By 2030 this number is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. While mega-cities have captured much public attention, most of the new growth is expected to occur in Tier – II and III cities, which often have fewer resources to respond to the magnitude of the change. In principle, cities offer a more favourable setting for the resolution of social and environmental problems than rural areas as cities generate jobs and income. In the backdrop of above, it is important to know the state-of-art of the living conditions of this migrated population and to study the possible means and subsequently delineating affordable housing policies. Though there are numerous criteria to define the affordable housing, most prominent is the one that focuses on the economic condition of the people. Affordable housing is a type of housing that is appropriate for the needs of a range of very low to moderate income households and priced so that these households are also able to meet other basic living costs such as food, clothing, transport, medical care and education. As a rule of thumb, housing is usually considered affordable if it costs less than 30 percent of gross household income. In this context, affordable housing refers to housing that has been developed with some assistance from the ii Governments. These type of houses may be developed in different ways with different sizes, including single or multi-bedroom units or houses. Besides such dwelling are available only in some specific locations and eligibility criteria applies for availing such households. In spite of Best & Sincerest efforts by Government, there always exists a huge gap between the demand and supply of houses i.e. number of houses required and the number of houses available. For example, as per 2011 census, India had a population of 1,210.98 million, out of which, 377.10 million (31.16%) lived in urban areas. During 2001-2011, the urban population of India grew at a CAGR of 2.8%, resulting in the increase in level of urbanization from 27.81% to 31.16%. This growing concentration of people in urban areas has led to problems of land shortage, housing shortfall and congested transit and has also severely stressed the existing basic amenities such as water, power and open spaces of the towns and cities. According to the 2011 census, the housing stock in urban India stood at 78.48 million for 78.86 million urban households. Though the gap between household and housing stock is narrowing, actual shortage is high due to a certain part of the current stock being dilapidated and people living in congested dwellings. In view of the above mentioned aspects, the present study was carried out to determine the state-of-art of the slums as well as slum dwellers of India with special emphasis on those located in the Nagpur City of central India (the study area). The specific objectives of study includes issues such as i) study of habitats of weaker sections, ii) study of economic, social, educational, cultural, occupational, and infrastructural aspects vis-à-vis household income of weaker section, iii) determination of association between socio-economic, educational, occupation related parameters and the household income, iv) identification of critical factors that govern household income of the weaker sections and to suggest evidence based set of policy guidelines for ‘affordable housing’. The objectives of the study were finalized on the basis of research gaps that exist in the subject area. The research gaps were identified on the basis of the comprehensive review of the published literature pertaining to the affordable housing. The study was delimited to the Nagpur City, which is located at practically the geographical center of India. It is estimated that 36% of the population in the city of Nagpur lives in slums. There are about 446 slum pockets in the city spread over an area of about 17 sq. km. Of the 446 slums, 287 slums are notified slums. The present study was carried out in three steps involving reconnaissance, sampling and analysis, followed by interpretation of statistics. Data collection was carried out by following standard methodology. The primary data collection in view of the objectives of the iii study involved preparation of research instrument i.e. interview schedule. Analysis of data has been done with the help of suitable statistical tests and the significance level was selected as 0.05 (or equivalently, 5%) by keeping in view the consequences of such an error. The salient findings of the study showed that the monthly household income of majority of slum dwellers is meager and the sex ratio is not skewed. Furthermore, the noticeable finding of this study indicates that the people mostly belong to hindu religion and have very less education. The primary reason for migrating to this place is the lack of job opportunities in their respective native places. Furthermore, strikingly, it is observed that the slum dwellers have no major social problems. Hence, in order to have an affordable housing policy for such a population, it will be necessary to first increase the awareness of benefits of good and well planned housing amongst them. The lack of awareness of good quality housing and perceived benefit of the same appears to be a hindrance for convincing these people to move to a new well planned housing. Though there are certain areas where the slum dwellers experience problems, the survey data showed that the problems faced by these individuals are as follows, the problems with respect to its gravity in decreasing order are those related to Water Supply, Solid Waste Management, Sewerage, Drainage, Communication, Transportation, Electricity. Since, the affordability of the households is an important issue for availing the same i.e. a household, baseline data of the individuals forming the society is crucial. Majorly, the key areas, which may influence the success of Govt.’s housing policy demand that more focus should be given towards improving the literacy as well as the skill levels of the population as these were found to be the core issues. Lastly, it is evident from the study results that the household income of slum dwellers is very low and hence the architects and planners should design the houses in such a way that cost of constructing house should be as low as possible. Besides, the role of Local and State/Central Govt. is also appears to be critical in formulating as well as implementing the affordable housing schemes. Major issue, which appears to put hindrance towards success of housing policies, is the unfavourable attitude of slum dwellers to move from the existing locations. Hence, an integrated approach is needed to successfully implement the new policy.