Housing for all anticipate large scale migration to new towns

Housing for all anticipate large scale migration to new towns

The Prime Minister’s Office has reportedly asked government departments to identify unused land, especially in developed government colonies, to plan affordable housing projects. This is fine when there is scope for high density as basic amenities are already available in such places. Small plots can be consolidated to build vertically and create parking and other amenities. But it would be a mistake to plan housing for all ignoring the economic imperative of urbanisation and the inevitable migration of large numbers of Indians from villages to towns, often new towns. Even if, by some miracle of planning, subsidy and directed lending by state-owned banks, homelessness were to be abolished next year, migration would create new homelessness.
As services and industry grow much faster than agriculture, creating new jobs, people will move from village to town, to take up the new jobs. These numbers would be huge. If half of India is to become urban over the next couple of decades, that would mean about 25 crore people migrating from village to town. They cannot crowd into existing towns. New ones have to be built: over some 20,000 sq km, if the density of new towns is to be around 12,000 people per sq km. India should take a page from China. Over the last few years, China has built dozens of new areas as part of a massive urbanisation drive. It now plans to build a new city Xiongan near Beijing — the special economic zone will reportedly cover an area nearly three times that of New York — to ease congestion in its capital. The need is for India to plan well ahead and manage the process of urbanisation in a way that suits our needs. The type of town planning that is envisioned will have a bearing how efficient and secure are our new cities.
Housing for all should focus on instruments that produce a plentiful stock of affordable housing units, to rent, if not quite to own, in the new towns that have to crop up to fuel India’s future growth. Over investing in existing habitats and providing people with titles would be politically attractive but not of much use.