Rural Housing Achieves Only 66 Percent Target
19, Jan 2019
Prelims level : Schemes of Government
Mains level : Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.
Context:
- States are delaying allotment of land for landless beneficiaries, says Centre .
Details:
- With two and a half months to go for the end of this financial year, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen) scheme to provide housing for the rural poor has achieved only 66% of its target to complete one crore houses.
- The Ministry of Rural Development still hopes to advance further towards the goal by the deadline of March-end, given that about 15 lakh homes have reached the late stages of construction with roofs ready to be added.
- Another 11 lakh homes have reached the lintel level, and may be completed in the next few months even if they do not meet the March 31 deadline. The scheme has been successful in reducing the average time of construction from 314 days to 114 days, according to an official statement.
- However, there has been little headway made with regard to one bloc of beneficiaries: the landless, who do not possess the land on which to construct the PMAY homes they are entitled to.In a letter to States dated January 4, the Ministry pointed out that only 12% of the 4.72 lakh identified landless beneficiaries had been provided land for house construction.
Laggard States:
- According to data provided in the letter, some of the most laggard States as of July 2018 were Maharashtra, which had provided land for only 890 of 1.39 lakh landless beneficiaries and Assam, which had provided land for 574 of 48,283 landless beneficiaries. In Bihar, only 55 out of 5,348 beneficiaries had been allotted land. West Bengal had not allotted land for even a single one of its 34,884 landless beneficiaries. “There are about 2.4 lakh left [to be sanctioned] in Bihar and about 30,000 each in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu,” said a senior official of the Ministry.
About PMAY (Grameen):
- Pradhan Mantri Awas yojana is a flagship scheme of government of India to eradicate poverty and ensure a life with Dignity as ensured in Article 21 of our constitution.
- It targets most of the rural population upto 75 percent and construct houses for better standard of living.
- Most of the rural folks live in kutcha house which is covered with a sheet on the top which is vulnerable to almost all the disasters even a normal increase in wind velocity.
- Under this scheme Pukka house will be constructed for all the family households