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Election 2009- Housing and Real Estate Remains Low on Political Parties Agenda
It is an irony that while personalised mud-slinging has occupied centrestage in 2009 parliamentary elections, housing and real estate is low on the poll agenda of the mainline political parties. Especially so when the ongoing crisis in the real estate sector, leading to unreasonably high property prices, has dashed the hopes of millions of middle class people to own their dream home, making a complete mockery of the government’s slogan of ‘Housing for All’. The ruling Congress (I) is simply content with initiating Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) for upgrading infrastructure and basic services in 63 cities with an outlay of Rs 1 lakh crore. The party’s manifesto does not go beyond saying that the works undertaken at the cost of Rs 42,000 crore under JNNURM to construct 14 lakh houses for the poor, besides improving water supply, sanitation and urban transport. Except for this usual rhetoric of low cost social housing, there is no mention of any programme or policy initiative to provide affordable homes to millions of middle class people.
Infact the poll manifestos of most of the national and regional parties simply smack of populist gimmicks for the poor. The TDP manifesto talks of providing houses costing Rs 1 lakh to all eligible poor. DMK sells a dream of hutless villages and slumless cities. CPI that is opposed to acquisition of land for real estate business in the garb of SEZ’s has simply promised to make the right to housing as a fundamental right. CPI (M) too focuses on poor, promising insitu development of slums with facilities and expanding public provisioning of housing especially for the socio economically weaker sections. It talks of curbing unbridled real estate development by prohibiting land grab and speculative real estate activity through new land acquisition act and promises increased public investment in infrastructure, especially rural infrastructure. NCP merely mentions about favouring private investment in infrastructure.
But perhaps it is BJP with good governance, development and security as its poll plank, has come up with a most comprehensive manifesto for the real estate and housing sector. In pursuit of the principle of ‘Shelter for All’, BJP manifesto promises construction of 10 lakh dwelling units for the poor every year. Talking of reviving the ailing real estate sector, the manifesto promises to bring down interest rates on housing loans to make housing affordable for the masses. It also talks of developing 15 new mega cities with world class infrastructure in five years. Investing heavily in infrastructure projects is at the top of BJP’s poll agenda. Infact BJP has issued a vision document on infrastructure, promising to take up 100 projects of national importance in a time bound manner and monitored by an apex agency directly under the supervision of the Prime Minister.
The document talks of undertaking infrastructure programmes at the cost of Rs 25 lakh crore, funded by tapping into India’s foreign reserves of $250 billion and through refinancing and interest cushion of Rs 2 lakh crore. An utopian promise. While the Congress (I) continues to revel under its flagship JNNURM programme, the BJP talks of recasting urban development policies, especially recasting and expanding JNNURM to cover metro cities, district headquarters and towns in Talukas and developing peripheral areas of city on the basis of Rurban concept to check migration. In the backdrop of massive job losses due to global meltdown and slowdown in real estate which is the biggest job creator after agriculture, BJP is the only party that talks of large scale job generation by mobilising massive public investment in roads and highways.
But sadly enough, none of the parties have committed to regulate the real estate sector. Not even the ruling Congress (I) and its government which has been publicly pronouncing to bring in a model regulatory bill for reforming the real estate sector. Through this bill, both the Congress (I) and its government have been promising to bring in professionalism and transparency by checking speculation to ensure that property prices do not go beyond unreasonable limits ensuring affordable housing for the masses and a fair deal for the property consumers especially home buyers. Even the BJP which swears by the urban development reforms falls far short of a comprehensive real estate regulation as its poll manifesto merely talks about GIS based mapping of urban properties and title certification.
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