Many visionaries and politicians have promised about India becoming a developed nation by the year 2020, and just like any other election promise it will be a dream for many Indians who believed. The definition of being a developed nation varies from person to person and there is no universal understanding as to what it means. In a dynamic world, the already developed nations are progressing and the developing nations have to move faster to come closer the levels of developed nations. If a nation can protect its citizens from external and internal disturbances and including during/after natural calamities it can be called a developed nation. The disturbances can be financial, food, employment, security lapses, health etc which are required for the peaceful existence of the citizens of a community.By this definition there is no one nation that can be called developed, but the achievement levels are different and thus a scale be obtained.
To own a house for oneself is everyone's wish, but to own multiple houses is greed. The increase in the cost of land has made it untenable for many ordinary citizens to purchase land in the residential areas and have to go far away from the main cities. While the neo rich people are buying the houses using the bank loans which offer very attractive schemes to the salaried employees and also tax benefits to the loan repayments, but for the ordinary middle class there is little hope. To make everyone's dream come true, the governments with its various schemes are giving small plots of lands and some basic amount of money to individuals whose selection criteria and procedures is till dates is very dubious.
During a recent converstaon with a car driver, it is found that the person has benefitted from one such scheme. The driver's family has been allotted some 3cents of land at 60KM from the main district near a village areas and apart from that the family is given Rs.50000 for the house construction. Now the political party that has given this scheme is Congress and the famliy is a part of devoted vote bloc. This may not be the vote bloc politics of any governemnt, but on the whole it work in that manner. Nearly 100families are provided with these facilities for house construction in the same areas.
The slums in the cities give a bad name to the humane nature of city folk, and to improve thier image, various city corporations have taken up the task of slum dweller relocation and rehabilitation. In some cases the people are given adequate compensation and in other cases they are thrown to streets. The people in the slum have a huge unity and a crucial vote blocs and hence very few political parties would like to go against them. Many governments have given pattas to the slums for thier current loaction and have regularized their houses and which creates problem for future governments to take up any action without paying high prices. Regularizing the illegal construction becomes less costly for the bigger builders who very often break all the city plans and are make loads of money.
The rental prices have become unreasonable in the cities for ordinary people to live in. Unless someone earns high salaries staying nearer to work place will remain a distant dream or he sould have done some good karma in his previous lives. Many people do 3hrs journey from house to work every day, which is a time wasted but since there is no otherway people have been doing this. Many friendships grow among those who regularly commute and its nice to have someone to share your problems. Due to improper public transportation also people do not want to stay from places, far away from their work place and in the process paying up more rents.
Many rich people whose children work, are known to stay away from their homes to avoid the journey of 2hrs daily, just becasue they have deep pockets. These deep pocketed and other neo rich people have made land a investment tool which is being practiced from a very long times. The artificial demand created for resedentail plots, commerical plots will jack up the prices and people hit jackpot if a industry is being started in the areas near thier lands. When the prices are high, they sell and its has become a business. The business if done in a fair manner is good, but the whole land deals are neck deep in blackmoney. The money that is dealt is not mentioned during the regisration or evaluation, and if the govt goes as per the documents and pays compensentaiton all sorts of hungama will be created. Re-estimation and other activites take place to give a good compensation to keep everyone happy at the cost of those who cannot afford it.
A boom in housing will improve the demand in many sectors simultaneously, from steel, cement to electronic appliances and finally the power. With short sightedness of the governments the housing is growing at a steep rate while the efficiency of the electric generation and distribution system has not been improved and we can see many states are having tremendous power cuts while others are faring better because of better planning. The growth of housing sector also demands huge of labor requirements, but based on numerous journalistic investigations, it is found that due the social welfare scheme NERGA there is lack of labour of agriculture now and only it will get shifted to the construction sector. It is always a cry by the employers of the dailywage labourers that the latter have become lazy and are not doing the amount work that they used to do some 10years back. We may call this silent protest or excess expectations.
Every family should have a roof over their heads and government alone can make it happen, because in a country like ours with more than 45% of people are BPL, and in that 2% are holding lands whose values are beyong their imagination and stay live a life a poor man. It can called the ignorance or the greed, but the children of these people are not fools but waiting to lay their hands on the property and also take as much from the government as possible. The vote bloc making policies of the government have been draining the coffers for a too long time which in the long run stall the economy.
In a country where a governor claims that he works for 16hours per day for some 5years to gain vast stretch of agricultural land, what to tell of the big and small government people. Land digitization has to be made and records should be made public. The lands should be controlled by the government. How can a person pay some amount of money and then claim the land to be his forever. The land should be given to be citizens on lease terms and not ownership terms. When the land has become a investment tool, the supply is controlled to increase the prices. Many of the fertile agricultural lands are converted into residential and commercial plots. This is in the long run create food production. Developed countries having destroyed their lands of fertility are now buying vast tracts of land in African and other third world countries to improve their food security and continuous supply. The land policy has to be strictly controlled to avoid agricultural land conversion and simultaneously residential lands where available have to provided to the people and good transportation facilities are to be provided connecting the residential areas and the industrial areas.
If a roof is not available over the head which cannot be called his own, the joy of living is not complete. Also a roof which leaks, and and can fall at any time will give no joy even if it is own house. The welfare scheme of the government should target the correct people and give them the opportunity to own a house, and after a set time the house should be taken back, otherwise like other schemes it will be a never ending doling out process and a vote bank making scheme. To become a developed nation Bharat 2020 the housing sector, real estate reforms have to be bought in and there is much to be improved and implemented.
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