Rural housing reaches only 66% target

Why is it in the news?
  • The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen) scheme to provide housing for the rural poor has achieved only 66% of its target to complete one crore houses.
More in the news
    • As per the data, about 15 lakh homes have reached the late stages of construction with roofs ready to be added.
    • Another 11 lakh homes have reached the lintel level, and may be completed in the next few months even if they do not meet the March 31 deadline.
    • The Ministry of Rural Development still hopes to advance further towards the goal by the deadline of March-end.
    • The scheme has been successful in reducing the average time of construction from 314 days to 114 days, according to an official statement.
    • However, there has been little headway made with regard to one bloc of beneficiaries: the landless, who do not possess the land on which to construct the PMAY homes they are entitled to.
Poor performance of states:
    • According to data provided in the letter, some of the most laggard States as of July 2018 were:
      1. Maharashtra, which had provided land for only 890 of 1.39 lakh landless beneficiaries.
      2. Assam, which had provided land for 574 of 48,283 landless beneficiaries.
      3. Bihar, only 5 out of 5,348 beneficiaries had been allotted land.
      4. West Bengal had not allotted land for even a single one of its 34,884 landless beneficiaries.
Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin)
  • Under the scheme, Government proposes to provide an environmentally safe and secure pucca house to every rural household by 2022.
  • In its first phase the target is to complete one crore houses by March 2019.
  • The unit cost for these houses has been significantly increased and now through convergence a minimum support of nearly Rs. 1.5 lakh to Rs. 1.6 lakh to a household is available.
  • There is also a provision of Bank loan upto Rs. 70,000/-, if the beneficiary so desires.
  • The selection of beneficiaries has been through a completely transparent process using the Socio Economic Census 2011 data and validating it through the Gram Sabha.
Source
The Hindu.



Posted by Jawwad Kazi on 19th Jan 2019
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