Beneficiaries Of The ‘Housing For All' Scheme Feel Pride

Beneficiaries of the ‘housing for all’ scheme feel pride but also the pinch of construction expenses.

- Monica Bathija

Vatsala Shankar Shevale removes a key on a thread hanging around her neck and unlocks the door to her house with a tinge of pride. The brick walls are plastered but unpainted. Inside, the house is spare, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and a ‘kitchen’ in one corner equipped with a gas cylinder that she procured under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. Outside, the dilapidated remains of her previous house are evident—debris and a brick chulha.

Shevale, a resident of Nagthane village in Maharashtra’s Sangli district, is a beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), which came into effect on April 1, 2016, after the restructuring of the earlier Indira Awaas Yojana. The scheme provides a unit assistance of `1.2 lakh for a 269 to 300 sq ft house to beneficiaries identified the scheme seems to be making sustained progress in villages. Out of the target of 4.5 lakh houses for Maharashtra till 2018-19, about 3.5 lakh homes have been completed, according to official data. But even as the government continues to drive momentum, focussed on its target of achieving ‘housing for all’ by 2022, the scheme’s beneficiaries struggle to tackle cost overruns with little awareness of financial and technical assistance they can avail of.

While Shevale’s son pledged his labour for a year to a farmer for an advance of `70,000 to complete his under the housing deprivation data of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011—the weakest and poorest sections of society, landless and those living in kaccha houses. The government envisaged a target of 1 crore houses in the first three years with another 1.95 crore houses to be built by 2022. Convergence with schemes for electricity, gas and a toilet as well as payment for 90/95 days labour under MGNREGA are part of the scheme.