Housing for all?

A housing strategy will have to look at a hierarchy of people who need it the most. Of the 4,041 statutory towns in the country, 63 per cent have slums. India has 13.75 million slum households, and they will rank high in strategies for housing

We are dealing with a sector here where clear data is not available and the variables are many. There have been efforts by different committees to make an assessment of the exact housing shortage in the country. The eleventh Five-Year Plan assessed the urban housing shortage at 24.7 million units, with 99 per cent of this pertaining to economically weaker sections (EWS) and lower-income groups (LIG). A technical group put the housing shortage in 2012 at 18.78 million units, taking into account households living in non-serviceable kaccha houses, obsolescent houses, congested houses and in homeless conditions. According to this group, 56 per cent of the shortage is in EWS, about 40 per cent inLIG and little over four per cent in MIG and above. TheMcKinsey report on India's urban awakening talked about 25 million households not being able to afford houses at market prices and around 17 million of these living in slums. Provision of affordable housing on such a large scale is unprecedented; only China, which had a policy of state provision of housing, had a comparable scale and spread.

A proper strategy of addressing the housing issue would naturally involve looking at a hierarchy of people who need it the most. Census 2011 reported that of the 4,041 statutory towns in the country, 63 per cent (or 2,543) had reported slums. Slum households are 17 per cent of the urban population, numbering 13.75 million households. Naturally, these persons will rank high in strategies for housing. The states with the most slum households are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. Among big cities, Greater Visakhapatnam, Greater Mumbai, Vijayawada, Meerut and Nagpur have the most. So these cities also will have to lay specific emphasis on the issue, especially because they are generators of higher GDP and employment.

As a proactive step to address the issue, the Budget this year proposed setting up a Mission on Low Cost Affordable Housing, anchored in the National Housing Bank. A lot of coordination would be involved if this approach is to work, because state governments and city bodies along with other agencies involved will all have to be brought together on a single platform.

Finding the resources required for a task of this dimension is going to be a real challenge. One estimate says more than 100 million houses will have to be built by 2022 if the shortage in both urban and rural areas put together is to be met. Thirty million houses for the rural homeless by 2022 are estimated to cost Rs 3.45 lakh crore. This is more than double the current level of investment; and the investment must grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 18 to 20 per cent. Easier flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) is a facilitative measure assured by the government so that the required funds are available. As a follow-up, while the minimum built-up area required to attract FDI has been reduced and, similarly, the capital requirement also has been brought down, removal of the three-year lock-in for overseas investments is a point on which a decision is expected.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), generally used as instruments for pooling of investment in several countries, have also been identified as another means of finding resources for which incentives have been proposed. It is reported that if the taxation relief sought materialises, $10 billion of REIT can be listed by March 2015, because the top 18 developers have the type of stock which has this potential.

The Reserve Bank of India's recent measure, of bringing housing loans up to Rs 50 lakh under priority sector lending and some first-time home buyers becoming eligible for tax breaks, are positive steps for one segment that has to be provided with houses.

But how to make this happen for slum-dwellers, or those who do not have the required wherewithal to be able to borrow funds? Lack of any documented proof of income is one of the major hindrances to housing finance companies being able to lend to people belonging to the lower-income categories.

Deepak Parekh has distinguished between affordable housing and low-cost housing, the latter covering basically the LIG and EWS categories. The very definition of affordable housing will have to be well-structured,
because key elements like gross household income, cost of the tenement excluding land costs, size of the tenement, all will have to be factored in. It cannot be a single all-India definition.

How the state governments proactively find land for the purpose of constructing large numbers of such houses will be critical. Without making a city-wise assessment of the number of such people to be provided with houses and updating it on a dynamic basis, the agenda will not make the required progress. Urban local bodies need to be involved in this act even though housing is not a subject constitutionally mandated to them. Since there are different central bodies like the NHB, banks, HUDCO, construction technology agencies and the ministries themselves - at the state level also, there are a variety of organisations involved - an empowered, effective coordination and monitoring structure must be put in place by state governments.

National versus public interest All freedoms should be circumscribed by the context

These are times of "polarisation" in India, and last week saw three new kinds of it. Two unrelated events precipitated it - the Pakistani boat that mysteriously burnt up in the Indian Ocean and the Charlie Hedbo killings in Paris, France.

The first new polarisation was between liberal sophisticates and the yobbos. The sophisticates pronounced Charlie as Sharlie while the yobbos stuck to plain old Charlie.

The second new polarisation was between the majority who said "Yes, but..." and the minority who didn't. The "yes but" types opposed those who insisted that freedom of expression is absolute. (This is fine, except what if some people choose to express themselves by shooting you dead? Who is to decide which is okay - words or bullets)?

That, in context, is critical and must not be ignored. Culturally, this is the basic thought underlying the Indian approach, not just to the freedom of expression but almost all things.

The third polarisation

In an unexpected way, the Paris killings served the Government of India well. They took attention away from the Pakistan boat affair.

And that led to the third polarisation between those who speak for the national interest (and its narrow subset, national security) and those who speak for the public interest.

The distinction between national and public interest is a fine one. Governments have a non-negotiable need to keep some things secret in the national interest. Equally, the press has a pressing need to reveal some or all of those things in the public interest.

Everyone agrees that governments need not reveal genuine state secrets. But a problem arises when criminality and stupidity are sought to be covered up.

For example, what national interest is being served by, say, keeping the details of the Purulia arms drop case under wraps?

The same can be said of the press also. Paid news is certainly stupid because it is self-defeating. It is not criminal - yet. But it should be.

The context, silly

This tussle between governments and the press is not a new phenomenon but it took on a new avatar 43 years ago - on June 13, 1971 to be precise - when The New York Times published the secret Pentagon Papers.

These comprised a report prepared by the US defence department. It showed how at the end of the 1960s, the US government had secretly expanded the Vietnam War to Cambodia and Laos but had not told the US public about it.

Until then, the press had generally refrained from exposing whatever nastiness their governments had got up to, even if it knew about it. It just wasn't done, not cricket, not kosher, not the proper thing to do.

There have been many such episodes since then, the latest being the Edward Snowden papers in the UK and, of course, Julian Assange's Wikileaks.

In India, too, we have had many exposes, especially in the last few years leading to much discussion, spoken and written.

The issue in the ensuing debate is always the same, everywhere: if national and public interest are not the same, which of them is more important?

Remarkably, those who hold forth most on the subject - politicians, newspaper editors and TV news anchors - all use these terms interchangeably, depending on their immediate convenience.

Politicians have always ignored the difference. Those in the Opposition have ignored it in order to embarrass the government. Those in the government have ignored it to accuse the Opposition of being traitorous.

Newspaper editors have wrung their hands in anguish and waffled. This is because while they can't be seen taking the government's side, they nevertheless sympathise with it.

The most mischievous, and wilfully so, are the TV news anchors. They simply want to preside over cockfights at prime-time.

Historically, the national interest argument has always trumped the public interest one.

In spite of the huge liberal outcry, Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers was tried but not convicted. Assange is on the run from the US government. Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency data that the US government was spying on US nationals, is living in Russia.

There are other less celebrated cases all over the world.

The truth is that governments are entitled to hide whatever they want to. Equally, it is up to the press to expose whatever it can.

That said, it is wrong of governments to hound people who expose it. But it is also wrong of journalists to make allegations under the guise of "we are only raising questions", which they know cannot, and will not, be answered.

President conveys sharp reminder on ordinance limits

Govt. must ensure extension of tenure after Parliament reconvenes

President Pranab Mukherjee reminded senior Ministers of the Narendra Modi government that the validity of an ordinance was for just six weeks after Parliament reassembled.

Mr. Mukherjee’s comments to the Ministers when they called on him to explain the urgency for promulgating three ordinances imply that the government will have to get these turned into Acts of Parliament. In order to do this, the government must get the contentious legislation passed either through the Rajya Sabha, where it doesn’t have the majority, or call a joint sitting of the two Houses.

The President told Ministers Arun Jaitley, D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Nitin Gadkari at a recent meeting that it was up to the government to ensure that the validity of the legislation extended beyond the mandated six weeks after Parliament resumed, The Hindu has learnt.

Under Article 123 of the Constitution, the President has to satisfy himself that “circumstances exist” that require him to “take immediate action” when both Houses of Parliament are not in session. Also, an ordinance has the “same force and effect” as an Act of Parliament.

“They [the government] could call a joint session of Parliament, where they have a majority. But it would be better if the consensus route was adopted,” the former Attorney-General, Soli Sorabjee, told this newspaper.

In the absence of Rural Development Minister Birender Singh, the President is reported to have sought detailed clarifications from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the urgency of on the ordinance amending the Land Acquisition Act, 2013. While seeking reasons to justify the urgency of issuing this and two other ordinances amending the Motor Vehicles Act and the Citizenship Act, Mr. Mukherjee is said to have pointed out that the impact of the ordinances would be permanent.

Govt getting states on board for web-based labour portal

The Centre is working on getting state governments on board to implement the plan for a web-based labour compliance portal, to help make doing business in India easier.

“The Union labour ministry is getting actively involved in this process of helping states become part of the Shram Suvidha portal. This will help India improve its ranking in ease of doing business,” said a senior ministry official who did not wish to be named.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in October last year launched this portal, a common platform for employers to file their annual returns, besides compliance and inspection reports.

According to sources, the labour ministry had also conducted a workshop in New Delhi last month to create awareness about the portal; all state governments had participated.

“As many as 10 states have already shown interest in the portal. This is an initiative where the central government is putting a lot of effort,” said the official.

This integrated portal operates through a unique labour identification number (LIN) for each employer or establishment that is allotted after getting registered on the portal.

So far, LINs have been issued to around 750,000 units. And, according to the government’s latest estimates, 19,389 inspections had been generated until December 23 last year. Of those, 15,892, or 82 per cent, have already been uploaded on the Shram Suvidha portal.

The idea behind the unified portal, which initially covers 16 of the 44 central laws, is easing the compliance process for industry.

It makes it simpler for companies to file annual returns and inspection reports through easier formats. Instead of 16 separate returns, a common online return can be filed.

The government has also drafted amendments to 10 central labour laws, such as the Contract Labour Act, Minimum Wages Act and Payment of Wages Act, to include the provision for uploading returns over the portal on or before February 1 of every year.

Plan is to enhance ease of doing business in the country

Sindhushree Khullar appointed NITI Ayog's CEO

Sindhushree Khullar appointed NITI Ayog's CEO
The retired IAS officer has been appointed on contract basis for one year from January 1, 2015

Former Planning Commission Secretary Sindhushree Khullar was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the newly formed NITI Aayog on Saturday.

Khullar, a retired IAS officer, has been appointed on contract basis for a period of one year from January 1, 2015, an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training said. Khullar, a 1975 batch union territory cadre IAS officer, had taken over as Secretary Planning Commission in April 2012.  NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) has replaced 65-year-old Planning Commission.

Noted economist Arvind Panagariya has been appointed as the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog. Economist Bibek Debroy and former DRDO chief V K Saraswat have already been appointed as full-time members by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is the Chairman of the body. Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Suresh Prabhu and Radha Mohan Singh have been appointed as ex-officio members while Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Zubin Irani and Thaawar Chand Gehlot are the special invitees

Choosing thy neighbour

The very process of development and change in India may be generating new forms of social and economic competition that manifest themselves in terms of social bias

Popular debate around social biases in India is structured around two competing narratives. One view holds that as an urbanising country with rapid economic growth over the past few decades, the importance of ascriptive identities such as caste and religion is gradually eroding. An opposing view holds that these biases have remained resilient in India, even in the face of substantial economic development and increasingly heterogeneous cities.

Yet, such a simple dichotomy understates the complexity in characterising social biases in India. New forms of bias may emerge while other forms fade away. While social biases often result from prejudice or chauvinism, they may also result from legitimate apprehensions about, or threats from, another social group. In order to develop a deeper understanding of the profile of social biases in India, we analyse new data from the Lok Surveys, taking advantage of both the scale and the geographic spread of the sample. Before describing our results, we note that any survey-based analysis of social bias is necessarily fraught with difficulties — questions about bias are sensitive and respondents are often unwilling to admit to their biases. Furthermore, there is no universally accepted tool used to measure bias.

Identity of neighbours

Rather than relying on complex typologies that can be impacted by preconceived notions, we focus our analysis on a simple topic, which we believe represents a core form of social bias: differences in preferences for the identity of one’s neighbours. These preferences capture important dimensions of social structure. They involve beliefs about how different social groups affect social solidarity in a neighbourhood, as well as apprehensions about interacting with different social groups. To uncover social biases in preferences for neighbours, each of our respondents was asked the following question: Would you be against having a family of (another identity group) as a neighbour?

“It is the middle class group that accounts for much of the social bias in preferences for the identity of one’s neighbours”

The part of the question in brackets was replaced by a randomly generated prompt. First, we randomised whether the respondent would receive a prompt for religious or caste bias. Then, based on this first stage, we asked about a social group different from that of the respondent. For instance, a Hindu respondent slotted to receive a religious bias prompt might be asked about a Muslim neighbour, and a Muslim respondent might be asked about a Hindu neighbour. Similarly, an upper caste individual slotted to receive a caste bias prompt could be asked about Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs), or Scheduled Tribes (STs). In this manner, we generated data on a complex set of social interactions in Indian society. It should be noted, however, that the results are based on correlations, not multivariate analyses.

Overall, 27 per cent of the sample population directly admitted that they were against having a neighbour from a different religious or caste community. While this number seems high, we cannot ascertain whether this is part of an increasing or decreasing trend in social biases over time because, to our knowledge, this question has never been asked before in a large nationally representative survey in India.

There is, as to be expected, significant variation in levels of social bias across States. Punjab displays the highest level of social bias, with 36 per cent of respondents displaying an aversion to living near those of another caste or religion, while the post-split Andhra Pradesh (Seemandhra) displays the lowest levels of social bias, with 12 per cent of respondents displaying aversion. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan also had relatively high rates of social bias (each with over 30 per cent of respondents indicating an aversion).

Social bias permeates all segments of Indian society. The education level or wealth of respondents had little impact on whether they would report social bias. Furthermore, there was little difference between how village dwellers and city dwellers responded to the question; 28 per cent and 27 per cent of rural and urban respondents, respectively, indicated social bias. These findings suggest that urbanisation and improved access to education may not reduce social bias.

The majority of the variation in social biases is seen between specific identity groups. SC and ST populations demonstrated a greater aversion to living near upper castes than to living near other marginalised communities, including Muslims. In total, 29 per cent of SCs indicated a social bias against upper castes, as compared to 24 per cent towards STs, and 38 per cent of STs indicated a social bias against upper castes, as compared to 24 per cent against SCs. Given the reality of caste hierarchies, perhaps marginalised communities are apprehensive that traditionally dominant communities will discriminate against them or hurt social solidarity in their neighbourhoods. A similar story may explain why Muslims display somewhat greater aversion towards Hindu neighbours (31 per cent) than Hindus do towards Muslim neighbours (27 per cent), especially considering that much of that gap is due to the relatively high rate of “lower caste” Muslims who were against living near a Hindu family (8 per cent higher than “upper caste” Muslims).

Not all social biases are driven by marginalisation. Though our survey cannot gauge the intensity of these preferences, upper caste respondents were more likely to say they did not want to live near OBCs than any other group. Overall, 34 per cent of upper caste Hindus admitted preferences against OBC neighbours, as compared to 26 per cent against SCs and 23 per cent against STs. A politically ascendant OBC population has begun to challenge high caste dominance in many social spheres, creating greater competition for resources. Based on this data, we conjecture that social bias may also be generated from threats to power and intensifying economic and social competition.

In order to understand the role of social and economic ascendance on preferences for neighbours, we also investigated the relationship between middle class identification and social bias. In the previous piece in this series (“Being middle class in India,” December 9, 2014), our colleagues Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav demonstrated that 49 per cent of all Indians, including people from all segments of Indian society, self-identified as “middle class.” They were more optimistic about the economic conditions of their family and the nation as a whole as compared to those who did not identify as middle class. The self-identified middle class was also more likely to report that their family had experienced social mobility within the last generation.

However, it is precisely this socially mobile group that accounts for much of the social bias we observe in our sample. Among those who do not identify as middle class, only 17 per cent of respondents said they did not want a neighbour from a different community. However, among those who perceive themselves as middle class, 39 per cent indicated social bias against a religious or caste community. The reasons for these large differences are not immediately clear. It is likely, however, that there is something fundamental about the construction of middle class identity that lends itself to social bias, as described in the earlier piece.

Causes for bias

Based on our data, we suggest two very different causes for bias in one’s preferences for neighbours. Marginalised communities display higher levels of social bias against traditionally dominant communities, perhaps as a reaction to historical stigmatisation and concerns for social solidarity. But traditional social marginalisation is not the whole story. Upper caste Hindus now report the most social bias against OBCs, instead of groups lower on the caste hierarchy. Those identifying as the Indian middle class display much higher levels of social bias than those who do not identify as such. We surmise that the very process of development and change in India may be generating new forms of social and economic competition that manifest themselves in terms of social bias. A modernising India may trigger the erosion of certain traditional hierarchies while, at the same time, opening the way for new cleavages based around social and economic contestation.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo

The horrific terrorist attack in Paris at the office of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo is a direct assault on the freedom of speech, thought and expression, the fundamentals on which all open, democratic societies are built. Ten staff members at the satirical weekly, including four of its top cartoonists, were gunned down by masked men who entered the building and targeted the editorial meeting in what seemed to be a well-planned and professional operation. They left shouting Allahu-Akbar, killing two policemen on the street outside before driving off in a getaway car. Since 2006, when it first published the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, Charlie Hebdo had been under threat of violent attacks by Islamist groups. Refusing to be intimidated, the publication continued to caricature Islam even after a firebombing in November 2011, just as it also relentlessly lampooned Christianity and Judaism — its Christmas week cover caricaturing the birth of Jesus was designed to provoke and cause offence. Self-censorship in order not to hurt religious sensibilities is now the norm in most parts of the world, so too in India, where media and expressions of popular culture including cinema, art and writing have to walk the tightrope daily in deference to what Salman Rushdie in an interview to this newspaper described as the non-existent “right to not be offended”: the fracas caused by Hindutva groups against the film PK is the most recent example of this. In truly democratic societies, this should not be the case, and that is what Charlie Hebdo believed and practised. Irrespective of what anyone thinks of its editorial policy, all who believe in freedom of expression and the democratic way of life must express solidarity with the magazine, and condemn this unspeakable act of violence against them.

Attacking democratic freedoms is part of a larger agenda. Whether it is al-Qaeda, IS or any other group, extremist ideology thrives best in a polarised society. If the sizeable numbers of people adhering to the Muslim faith have been able to resist Islamism, it is because French republicanism has been able to surmount even the most divisive controversies, such as the ban on wearing the hijab and niqab in public and the Islamophobic discourse by the French right-wing parties that surrounded it. While the inevitable security measures will have to be taken, it would be most unfortunate if the attack on Charlie Hebdo were to give rise to a backlash against French Muslims. That would result in precisely what Islamist groups want — an alienated Muslim population that would become a recruiting ground for their violent cause. Maintaining freedoms and equality before the law in the face of a severe challenge to security is the most difficult test for any democratic polity and society.