The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill goes a long way in ensuring that home buyers are not taken for a ride. But apart from buyers, there are other stakeholders — neighbourhoods and displaced populations — who are often at the receiving end of promoters. What about them?
The role of a real estate regulator should have been ideally expanded to include societal and environmental interface as well — something that the present law does not provide for. The impact of an apartment complex on water availability and overall ecology of the region has not been given the attention it deserves.
The state, by getting a well-knit but limited law enacted, has responded to the concerns of an influential section of the society, namely, middle class home buyers, while being quite indifferent to the rest. The results of this bias are visible all around us. It is possible that a builder sticks to the rule book as far as the buyer is concerned, but makes enormous drawals on the groundwater, causing distress to the surrounding population. (It does not help that groundwater laws in India are ill-equipped to deal with borewell and tanker mafias.) For that matter, a builder may vandalise or limit access to a lake, river or sea while observing the law with respect to the buyer who is primarily interested in an uncluttered ‘view’.
A middle class home owner whose property is taken over for an apartment complex is generally given a house in the new structure. But if a water-body-facing apartment on the suburbs is to displace a semi-rural community, are they promised a home, or some sort of share in the property which includes appreciation benefits? Even the UPA’s land law, considered too harsh by industry, does not go far enough.
The Real Estate Bill is fine so far as it goes. But like many of today’s Bollywood flicks, it speaks of an India where the urban poor do not exist.
Senior Deputy Editor