Jafar Hussain has waited for three years for funds from the central government to build a pucca house. Now, he is part of a pool of 3.57 crore from whom the government will select less than 1 crore beneficiaries.
The tailor from Dhengura village in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand is among 3.57 crore families whose names had been suggested by state governments in 2019 for housing funds under the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana (PMAY) Grameen.
Out of these, the Centre would choose around 1 crore families based on assessments of poverty and houses by panchayats.
“We three sisters and our parents live in a kachcha house. My father’s name was proposed three years ago by the panchayat for a house under the PMAY-G. We keep meeting the sarpanch. He says it all depends on the central government. We are waiting,” said Rounak Parween, Jafar’s daughter.
The Union government has extended the deadline for the “housing for all” scheme from March 2022 to March 2024. Under the scheme, each beneficiary receives Rs 1.2 lakh in the plains and Rs 1.3 lakh in the hills to build a pucca house.
Those living in dilapidated kachcha houses are eligible. Of the 2.95 crore beneficiaries selected on the basis of the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) of 2011, 2.06 houses have been built as on November 29, 2022.
An official in the ministry of rural development said the number was expected to reach 2.43 crore by March 2023.
The target is to finish building all 2.95 crore houses by March 2024, a deadline which earlier was March 2022.
The rural development ministry recently proposed to the finance ministry to allocate Rs 54,000 crore in 2023-24 to support the construction of 52 lakh houses. Jafar earlier lived in a khapda ka ghar (burntearth house), which was not counted among kachcha houses in the 2011 SECC.
However, for the past three years, he and his family have been living in a kachcha house with a polythene roof after his earlier house got damaged.
“The central government will provide funds to only some of the 3.57 crore families. As of today, there is no plan to extend PMAY-G beyond 2024,” the official said.
Aneesh Thillenkery, secretary of the Ekta Parishad, a civil society organisation spearheading a movement for a legally entitled right to homestead land for the landless, said “housing for all” cannot be a deadline-driven programme since new beneficiaries will always be there.
“It is not correct if the government sticks to the target of 2.95 crore. Based on this target, housing for all cannot be achieved. About 2.57 crore families selected (by the state governments) will be excluded. They deserve support like others,” he said.
Landless families
Nearly 2.8 lakh beneficiary households cannot build houses because they do not have land. The rural development ministry had asked the states to provide land to them but the states are finding the task difficult. The rural development ministry has also allowed the states to construct multi-storey buildings on government land for the landless.
