FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SAFE HOUSING IN INDIA:: LESSONS FOR NEIGHBOURING ASIAN COUNTRIES

India has about 305 million houses as per 2011 Census 2011 of India [MHA, 2011]. The decadal increase in the housing stock over the last five decades is ~18–25%. India’s Housing challenge today is larger than ever before. Two challenges that gaze at India today are: (a) Over 30 million houses need to be built to address the housing shortage, and (b) India needs to accommodate the rural to urban migration, projected to do a flip of Urban:Rural population ratio from 30:70 today to 70:30 by 2035. This rural to urban migration will seek the urban areas to grow by about 2.3 times in its housing requirement alone; many towns will grow into cities, and cities into mega polis. Thus, India needs a plan and diligent implementation of the same.

To begin with, India needs to put in place systems and processes that address not only the current shortage of housing, but also the likely behavioral changes in the people of India and the additional urban housing. Strategies of employing a purely contractor driven system without the engagement of the people of India may not suffice. In this regard, 5 inter-dependent actions are needed to strengthen India’s housing development effort (Figure 1). These five actions are in the directions of Typologies, Safety, Human Resources, Practice and Policy.