Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana

The Modi government is renaming yet another welfare programme to remove its association with the Gandhi family. This time its the Indira Awaas Yojana, which aims to build homes for the rural poor. Its to be renamed the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. Cornerstone of the governments housing-for-all initiative, this is meant to mark the start of an overhaul.

"The name is being changed and many upgrades being made to the scheme," a senior official said.

"We are still discussing the inclusion of the word Grameen in the name of the scheme," the official said. A Cabinet note amending the scheme has already been floated by the rural development ministry. This proposes that the homes get bigger and costlier. The unit cost of each house will nearly double to Rs 1.25 lakh from the current allocation of Rs 75,000 per household.

In the new design, the kitchen will be bigger, increasing the overall area to 25 square metres from 22 sq m. The government is also proposing to converge this with other rural development schemes. The Modi government has already renamed at least two programmes that bore Rajiv Gandhis name — one after Sardar Patel and the other after BJP icon Deendayal Upadhyaya. The programme will continue to have linkages with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to ensure toilets in each house.

Construction has been made an eligible item of work under MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) programme and therefore 90-95 mandays of unskilled manual wages can also be availed of by housing scheme beneficiaries.

The states have also been asked to make sure that benefits of the Unnat Chulha Abhiyan (more efficient, less polluting cooking fuel) along with the Jan Dhan Yojana (financial inclusion) and the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (electrification) are made available to beneficiaries.

Indira Awaas Yojana

What is Indira Awaas Yojana?

While allocating funds under this scheme, 75% weightage is given to the scarcity of housing and 25% to poverty ratio. SC/ST gets benefit as 60%funds are for them, physically handicapped enjoys 3% share in funds and minorities have 15% share in the total funds.

Customarily the houses under this scheme are either allotted to the women or to both husband and wife.

5% of the total fund is kept for emergency situation like natural calamity or riot etc. This fund can move from state to state.

Beneficiaries are selected by Gram Sabha either from the list of eligible living below poverty line or Permanent Indira Awaas Yojana waiting list.

House is constructed by the beneficiary without the involvement of contractors. Though there is no standard plan but the house must have a sanitary latrine and smokeless chullah. To construct toilet additional assistance of Rs 9,000 is given under IAY. 

Coverage

Under Indira Awaas Yojana, 25.2 million houses have been constructed since 1985. Rural housing is one out of six parts of Bharat Nirman Programme. Under Phase 1 of this programme 60 lakh houses were expected to be constructed from 2005-06 to 2008-09 across the country. By spending Rs 21720.39 crore 71.76 lakh houses were constructed in the same period, much higher than the target. For the next five years starting from 2009-10 the target was doubled and kept at 120 lakh houses. During the second phase, 85 lakh houses have been constructed in the last three years.

Monitoring

Monthly reviews and Annual reports are part of the monitoring system for Indira Awaas Yojana.

Area Officers of the States and Union Territory visit the allotted states and UTs to find if everything is going on as per guidelines or not. They inspect whether the scheme has been actually implemented or not by visiting the location. Area Officers act as a connecting link between the policy makers and implementing agencies.

In year 2007 online monitoring mechanism has been put forward. With the help of this programme DRDAs can upload the monthly progress report directly to the website of the Ministry. MIS Programme ‘AWAASsoft’ further simplified the monitoring.

In the fiscal year 2012-13 the budget allotted for rural housing was Rs 11075 crore. Out of this Rs 10513.20 crore have been allocated to construct 27.27 lakh houses under IAY. This indeed is a great scheme for providing housing to all the rural poor.