The floor surface index and land use norms in large cities, which do not have adequate open land for housing needs to be revised. Otherwise, low cost housing for slum dwellers in these cities is not possible, said Union Minister for Housing Ajay Maken on Monday.
He was addressing a Confederation of Indian Industry workshop on governance of megacity regions.
He said that on one hand urban poor, who are major service providers, don’t have proper houses, while on the other, houses of the High Income Group (HIG) and Middle Income Group (MIG) are lying vacant.
The existing polices are more in the favour of HIG and MIG housing colonies. Therefore, rehabilitation of slums in low cost housing schemes in the same areas was the need of the day.
“About 50 per cent of the population in Mumbai stays in slums. In cities like Delhi, about 84 per cent are homeless, but these people are self-employed and contribute towards economic growth. They live close to their workplaces. Therefore, we need to create affordable housing even in premium locations of mega cities. It is required to bring these service providers nearer to the service consumers,” Maken said.
He pointed that the Centre cannot give any directive to the State Governments in the matter of FSI and land use norms, but in the New Delhi master plan, which is under the Centre’s purview, a number of FSI relaxations have been provided for low cost housing.
Urbanisation
He said Indian policy makers took a long time to understand the challenges thrown up by urbanisation. In the early years after independence, the thrust of the planners was to stop the people from coming to the cities. It took two decades to understand that urbanisation was inevitable and it took even longer to realise that it is desirable.
“Today, the urban dwellers, which are 30 per cent of the population, produce about 70 per cent of the GDP. Each urban inhabitant, when compared with the rural one, contributes 2.21 times to the GDP,” Maken added.
He said that policy makers are scared about population density in cities. They cite that a population density of more than 30,000 dwellers per square km in very high. But some areas in London city have a working population of 1.25 lakh per square km.
“Policy makers and government officials should not get intimidated by these figures. Cities have enough resources for these areas, but the real challenge is to manage them properly,” he said.