To create sufficient and affordable housing for the ever-increasing hordes of India’s working population (which includes different classes of people), the government has to first look at its own property holding. The post-colonial state (and India is not alone in this) has disproportionate urban land under its ownership, which of course it ostensibly holds in the public trust. The colonisers appropriated the best urban property for its own interests, leaving the clustered bazaars aside for the ‘natives’. The Civil Lines and the Cantonment areas straddled the best location, from Bareilley to Bangalore. Even in small district towns like, say Tezpur in Assam, the DM, SP and Civil Surgeon live in bungalows that rest atop some shoulder of the undulated land that overlooks the Bhramaputra. These sprawling havens appear almost unreal, having nothing to do with the overall living conditions of the citizenry. The time has come to democratise the distribution of prime urban land in India. Access to urban property (both commercial and for housing) by private citizens is the surest formula for sustenance and well-being of our large numbers. The socialist Indian state has traditionally believed its job is to distribute largesse through subsidies, and employ the educated in government jobs (with the obvious caveats included, of course, like proximity and patronage and so on). I recall this conversation from about ten years back between me and a gaggle of cobblers who lined the little sidewalk next to the ITO bus stop. Plans were afoot to evict them. They knew I did a bit of writing and therefore their petition to me. I asked: “What do you want form the state?” I had thought they would have a long list ready. Instead, this is what they had to say: “Oh, there is just one thing we deeply desire from the state; that it stays far away from us.” Urban centres generate trading activities. Perhaps every village in UP has at least one member earning his livelihood in Delhi, providing vending services of one type or the other. The vendor’s property is tenuous at best, a push cart or a cycle rickshaw, a mobile republic under constant threat from the beat constable. Land is Delhi is far too expensive. I personally have been here close to 25 years now, and do not possess an inch of land in my name. But these poor people create temporary assets, and bravely battler the tyranny of the state, because in a big city like Delhi, they can earn their livelihood. This scenario explains why urban land is so precious. It also underscores the government’s inexcusable hold over so much urban property. That which is morally wrong, however, also provides the opportunity for a remarkable initiative, should the government have the will and conviction to try it. The Indian state sits of huge tracts of urban land. For those familiar with the city of Delhi, here’s a survey. Almost all of central Delhi belongs to the state, the appointed abode of those irrepressible apparatchiks who make our daily lives so comfortable in innumerable sarkari offices. From Gole Market to Bappa Nagar, from Shah Jehan road to RK Puram, officers (did someone call them public servants?) of the Central Government have disproportionate presence in perhaps the most expensive residential real estate in India. At Chanakya Puri, the story gets curiouser. The Railway Board has DLF Gurgaon style row housing for officials under its command. The latest is a plush Apartment Block next to the much sought after Sanskriti School (another quasi-sarkari institution) for officers of the External Affairs Ministry. These dwellings would not sell for less than Rs 6-7 crore each. Their monthly rent could fetch the state not less than Rs 1,50,000 per dwelling. Just two hundred of these flats/homes could fetch the Government Rs 36 odd crore per annum as rent. The additional HRA payout to these officers (should they, like public servants the world over, be required to arrange for their own housing, just like ordinary people like us) would be approximately Rs 4.3 crore (@ Rs 18000 per officer per month, assuming basic pay of Rs 60,000). What if the state decides to ask all its officers in metropolitan cities to vacate their official residence and arrange for their own housing? That’s the norm for public servants the world over. The land bank created could be both disinvested (better than selling PSUs, right?) and rented out, depending on viability. Government officers would be encouraged to occupy flats already owned by them, or use their HRA payout to pay EMI for property bought on loan. That would boost the realty sector. The government on the other hand would come into unimaginably humungous sums of money, so huge that the mind boggles at the attempt to arrive at numbers. Suffice it to say that divesting just a fifth of
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:11:04 +0000
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