Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Right to home' that was published in Newsband

Right to home

It is high time our government provided affordable houses to every urban poor. Most of the people belonging to lower income groups find the need of houses.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation should come up with a right policy that will make promoting of affordable housing possible. Many existing schemes have barriers that prevent the poor from benefiting. The government should take steps like fixing affordable housing loan targets for banks to achieve.

The government has realized that it alone cannot meet the needs and have tried to rope in private developers. That’s a good move.

The problem of housing cannot be adequately addressed unless the speculative investment made in the sector throughout the country across urban and rural areas is controlled. Investment in real estate is big business and all the black money and ill gotten wealth is channeled into this sector and it goes unregulated and not monitored.

The worst thing is it is always the poor who stand excluded of the benefits of the growth.  The rich goes on to own three to four houses and aspire for more to gain on the appreciation in the value of land and building since they know that prices of houses simply skyrocket.

There need to be taxation on those owning more houses so as to regulate the prices and make it affordable to the lower middle class.

Everyone has a "right to home". But it is the population growth, migration to urban areas, conflicting needs for existing land, and insufficient financial and natural resources that result in widespread homelessness and habitation in inadequate housing. We find so many children, men and women sleeping on sidewalks, under bridges, subway stations and public parks, and living in ghettos and slums.

These statistics are evidence for the difficulty governments have in guaranteeing access to housing for their citizens. The fact that shelter is a human right makes it necessary for the government to provide each one of its citizens with land, four walls and a roof.

Most important thing is every citizen needs to be aware of his or her right to home. Increasing access to education will make aware all the citizens of their right to housing. The realizations of those rights mostly lead to greater access to housing.

In a vast country like ours there are countless issues that arise with every step that follows. Everyone tries to make merry out of the government driven schemes; they are not considering the perspective of hundreds and maybe thousands of people who are adversely affected because of their selfish motives. Hence a moral factor in our economy should be introduced. Only then can every citizen of the country possess a home.