NEW DELHI: Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Srinivas Katikithala on Wednesday stressed on the need to boost availability of land to provide habitation to young mobile population of the country. Addressing a CII conference on Affordable Housing, he emphasised on the need to move away from housing to habitation as well as from owned assets to sharing and rentals.
Katikithala said there is a need to ponder on how habitation can be made available to people, youth, especially on a real-time basis, on a need basis.
“Most of our youth population is increasingly mobile. Jobs are mobile. And the ability to move from an urban place to another urban place and participate in the economic opportunities is a function of that mobility. If we are not giving that mobility, then you are not giving access,” the secretary said.
He said there is a need to ensure that public land, wherever it is held, becomes available.
“Today land is a factor of construction, a factor of cost, a factor of asset. How can we take land out of the play? How do you make land available…in a way that the cost of the product comes down sharply,” the secretary said.
“We are beginning to bring this thinking within the ministry,” he said.
Katikithala also pointed out that the government in the past two decades has also “thrown up its hands in trying to manage land issues”.
The secretary asked the real estate industry to debate on these issues.
Katikithala said the government is investing huge amounts of money in improving transportation infrastructure, especially in urban centres.
The secretary said it is the responsibility of the ministry to address the needs of the sector. “We have to advocate them. So certainly we will keep an open mind, have frank conversations, figure out what should be an appropriate kind of intervention.”
According to a statement by CII, Kuldip Narayan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, hoped that the concept of energy efficient homes will turn into reality in near future.
Highlighting the challenges of the bottom of the pyramid in accessing affordable housing, Chittaranjan Dash, Principal Commissioner-Housing, DDA, said ” We are happy to know that DFS (Department of Financial Services) is working on a product to cater to the informal sector.”
In the context of rapid urbanisation, affordable housing would include not just houses but also infrastructure like, water, schools, soft infrastructure, said Neel Raheja, Chairman, CII National Committee on Real Estate and Group President, K Raheja Corp.
He also emphasised on the need to ensure that cities are sustainable.
Source Homevior.in
