PMAY

Successive governments in India have pushed for the construction of ‘pucca’ houses to improve the quality of low-income housing. The pace picked up during the PMAY, a large-scale program on house building that started in 2015. The total number of completed houses under the program in rural and urban areas is nearly 25 million, which is about 11.1% of the housing stock in India. This tale, investigates two questions—how does the notion of ‘pucca houses’ manifest in different regions in India; and what are the changes that happened in this landscape after PMAY implementation.

This article attempts to capture the story of an informally employed low-income household who, with the help of informal financial agents, successfully navigated the informal-formal space of housing finance to buy the house of their choice. The article starts with contextualising the accessibility and affordability constraints for housing finance faced by low-income households. Following this, we discuss a case study of an informally employed home loan borrower, explaining the negotiations playing at the cusp of the informal-formal. Lastly, we deliberate upon the roles of lending institutions, specifically during the COVID-19 crisis and the financial recovery of the home loan industry.

In July 2020, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) scheme, as a sub-scheme of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana—Urban (PMAY-U). ARHC aims to address the housing needs of the urban poor and migrants through rental housing, brought to national attention by the reverse migration triggered by the COVID pandemic-induced lock-down. The ARHC scheme is co-terminus with the PMAY-U mission period, that is, March 2022. With a few months left to call for bids and award projects, this piece assesses the state of play in the scheme’s implementation—its emerging modalities, stakeholder engagement and current status—given its importance as India’s first national rental housing scheme.

As a response to the COVID-19 migrant crisis and in furtherance of the Government of India’s ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ mission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) programme under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana scheme to improve the living conditions of urban poor/migrant workers. Although the initiative is a novel step, it operational aspects demand more than what is being offered for enabling private/public agencies to leverage the opportunity and turn it into a grand scale programmatic intervention.  

The affordable housing rental complex (AHRC) scheme acknowledges the needs of mobile workers who spend short periods of time in the city and do not seek permanent housing. Applying what we know about migrant work and the development sector will help India to realise AHRC’s potential.

The Government of India announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complex (ARHC) scheme in 2020 to provide formal, affordable, and well-located housing to urban poor and migrant workers’ communities. This study documents the results of a survey conducted by the Working People’s Charter covering aspects of ARHC supply streams, communities’ capacities and needs, and the scheme’s governance.

On 14 May 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a “Rs 70,000 crore boost for the housing sector” in India by further extending the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for the Middle Income Group by one year, up to March 2021. This extension was announced as part of the second tranche of relief measures to boost the Indian economy under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. However, the announcement is only aimed at satisfying a temporary need of reviving the economy without being mindful of fulfilling the real objective of the PMAY – to provide ‘housing for all’.

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched in 2005, and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), launched in 2015, have been some of the most significant interventions towards improved housing in recent times. A comparative look at their contribution to urban housing offers some clues about how policy is being shaped to respond to the emerging needs of Indian cities.

What does PMAY-Urban data about sanctioned houses tell us about state policies with regard to adopting different verticals of the program across city sizes?

As the housing finance ecosystem adapts to service low-income housing, targeted interventions that build trust and connect disparate actors in the housing supply chain can bring transformative change. In this Q&A, Institution Builder and India Housing Federation co-founder Manikandan K. P. points out the opportunities and insights that led to a successful housing finance intervention for households availing the beneficiary-led construction (BLC) component of India’s flagship public housing scheme, the PMAY.