CURRENT AFFAIRS

Description

PMAY-G: Empowering Rural India with Affordable Housing and Basic Amenities

Description: Explore the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G) and its impact on providing pucca houses and essential amenities to rural households. Learn about its features, challenges, progress, and green initiatives.

Housing is a part of basic need of human being. The census of India defines a ‘census house’ as a building or a part of a building having a separate main entrance from the road, common courtyard or staircase, etc. used or recognized as a separate unit.

Why launched?

The houses of the rural poor in India are found to be deficient in various ways.

The major housing problems of the poor relate to the following.

·  The houses in the rural areas lack protection to the residents against wind, rain and cold.

·  They lack proper arrangement for light and fresh air.

·  Rural houses do not have separate arrangement for keeping animals.

·  There is no proper arrangement for basic sanitation and drinking water.

·  The surroundings of rural houses lack requirements for hygiene

PMAY-G aims to provide pucca houses with basic amenities to all eligible houseless households and households living in kutcha and dilapidated house in rural areas by 2024.

What are the Salient features?

·  Providing assistance for construction of 2.95 crore houses in rural areas over the period 2016-17 to 2023-24.

·  The minimum unit (house) size enhanced from 20 sq. mt. (under IAY) to 25 sq. mt, including a dedicated area for hygienic cooking.

·  Enhancement of unit assistance from Rs. 70,000 to Rs. 1.20 lakh in the plains and from Rs 75,000 to Rs.1.30 lakh in Hill States/UTs, North Eastern States, difficult areas and Integrated Action Plan (IAP)districts.

·  The cost of unit (house) assistance is shared between Central and State Governments in the ratio 60:40 in plain areas and 90:10 for North-Eastern and Hill States (Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand) and UT of Jammu and Kashmir. In respect of other Union Territories, 100% cost is borne by the Government of India.

·  Provision of assistance (Rs. 12,000/-) for toilets through convergence with Swachh Bharat Mission – Gramin (SBM-G), MGNREGS or any other dedicated source of funding.

·  Provision of 90/95 persondays of un-skilled wage labour under MGNREGS for construction of house, over and above the unit assistance.

·  Identification and selection of beneficiaries, based on the housing deficiency and other social deprivation parameters in SECC-2011 data and finalised Awaas+ lists, and verified by the respective Gram Sabhas.

·  The beneficiaries of PMAY-G, in addition to being provided financial assistance, are also offered technical assistance in the construction of quality house.

·  Convergence with other Government schemes for provision of basic amenities viz., toilet, drinking water, electricity, clean & efficient cooking fuel, treatment of solid and liquid waste etc.

·  The programme is being implemented and monitored through end-to-end e-governance solutions, viz. AwaasSoft and AwaasApp

·  The house is electrified through Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)/ Saubhagya scheme of Ministry of Power.

·  Free LPG connection is provided through Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas.

·  Efforts are also being made for providing piped water supply under Jal Jeewan Mission.

·  Allotment of house is made jointly in the name of husband and wife except in case of widow, unmarried and separate person.

How is the progress?

·  So far, over 3.04 Crore pucca houses have been built in rural areas in the last nine years. Among the houses targeted for building under PMAY (G), 75% belong to the ST, SC or Minority communities.

·  Further, 7 out of 10 houses are either solely or jointly owned by women, which in turn has fulfilled the aspirations of women of owning a pucca house and strengthened their participation in the financial decision-making of the household.

·  Houses built under PMAY-G have provision of basic amenities like toilet, electricity, piped drinking water, clean & efficient cooking fuel (LPG), etc.  When people actively participate in building their own houses and have access to these amenities, they feel a strong connection to their homes, making it a place where they truly belong and feel emotionally attached.

As is evident, PMAY-G has shown significant progress since its inception. The scheme has adopted measures to increase the pace of house completion, including timely allocation of targets, monitoring using IT tools, regular reviews, and timely release of funds. It has also focused on quality construction by training rural masons and providing region-specific house designs.

Green Initiatives under PMAY-G

PMAY-G encourages adoption of, as far as possible, green designs and technologies, appropriate to the local culture and geo-climatic conditions (including multi-hazards), use of local material minimising carbon foot print and that the houses are comfortable. It also aims at adding to local job creation.

It is envisaged that the green PMAY-G designs and technologies will influence rural housing in general and enable rural India to emerge with sustainable housing with green and disaster resilient features in the future.

What are the implementation hurdles?

·  Improper execution in a few states:  Some states delay their contributions which drastically affects progress. In 2020, nine states had delayed the payment of 2,915.21 crores to the beneficiaries. In some states, even central government funds are not released on time. A deficit of 200 crores was reported in the year 2020. The government needs to ensure the prompt release of the state contribution and direct benefit transfer in the case of central funds on the lines of the MGNREGA.

·  Access to finance: The amount of 1.2/1.3 lakh in subsidies is insufficient for building a new house in rural areas. A household needs access to sufficient funds from financial institutions to mitigate the funding shortage. The PMAY-G mission guideline provides for INR 70,000 loans through NABARD. Unfortunately, there is not much progress on this front. Even large public sector banks like the State Bank of India (SBI) do not have tailored products for accessing needs and providing funds to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). 

·  Poor quality of households: The 2020 CAG Audit Report on General, Social & Economic Sectors found a compromise in the quality of houses constructed under PMAY-G. The ministry has provided ideal prototypes and construction plans. However, there is no mechanism for ensuring its effectiveness on the ground. Therefore, it is recommended that the government strengthens the quality monitoring mechanisms.

·  No House for landless poor: the PMAY-G does not have a separate vertical like PMAY-U to address the housing needs of the landless poor. The landless are the poorest of the poor and belong to marginalized castes. The need of the hour is to acknowledge the limitations of the existing scheme and to devise an intervention solely intended to solve the housing problem of the landless rural population.

·  Convergence with schemes: The PMAY scheme emphasizes convergence with other government schemes like the construction of toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission, benefits to MGNREGA workers on completion of 90 days, drinking water connection under Jal Jeevan Mission, electricity connection, clean cooking fuel under Ujjwala Yojana. The aim is to provide basic amenities and assistance for house construction. However, various studies and CAG audit reports have pointed out the lack of convergence of schemes. The CAG report on Rajasthan in 2020 revealed a lack of toilets in 49 percent of surveyed households — the construction of a house is complete only after the completion of the toilet.

A way forward

PMAY-G is an ambitious programme to achieve ‘Housing for All’ in rural India. State governments should commit to releasing funds on time so that projects get completed without delay. Beneficiaries require support with access to formal financing to fund the beneficiary share. Landless families need to be included in the scheme as they are the most deserving segment that requires government support. There is scope for improving aspects of the quality of housing — one of the ways to achieve this is through better convergence with other central and state schemes.

Here is the link to Vivad se Vishwas II Scheme