Building Houses in Kerala is becoming a costly affair for people with small and marginal incomes. With each passing year the cost of building materials and also the construction labor is moving up phenomenally. Thus urban developments have recommended that the government agencies involved in earlier times in housing development should not totally exit from the housing sector.
To sum up, the public sector should be strengthened more as a promoter and facilitator and accordingly they should reorient their activities to serve the interests of the poorer sections. On the other hand, the private and community sector including the cooperatives and groups of individuals should be encouraged to take up housing construction.
Further, efforts should be made to remove various impediments by introducing necessary legislative measures for active participation of private sector for greater developments. Such coordination between the public and the private sector will go a long way to meet the housing needs of the urban poor. Recent trends indicate a move in such a direction.
The problem of slums if not tackled in a time bound manner will prove to be a white elephant in the long run. Scores of case studies can be suggested regarding such developments in other parts of the country and even abroad. Mumbai is a prominent example worth mentioning. Perhaps in no other city in India can you see the proliferation of slums and squatter settlements without adequate sanitation facilities and other amenities. The failure of the successive administrations resulted in total breakdown of the civic amenities in this area.
In the prominent cities of Trivandrum, Cochin and Kozhikode future urban development programmes need to be designed so as to mitigate the problems faced by the urban poor. Or else another Mumbai may get repeated in this picturesque destination.
Fri 17 Jun 2011 - 8:47