Even today, the demand for high-end housing has not been met

Landlocked in the land of the free Hafeez Contractor Indian Express: Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The Urban Land Ceiling Act seeks to give the poorest of our society access to affordable housing. Over the years it has managed to do the exact opposite

The Urban Land Ceiling Act, like other socialistic legislatives, has flopped like the larger philosophy itself. In a democratic and market-driven economy, it can never work. A person who owns an asset is not going to give it away altruistically for the larger good of the society. Also, a country like India that wants to liberalise and become capitalistic cannot afford such laws. The law, by impeding the free market economy to reallocate land use even as the economic base of the city has transformed over the years, has led to housing shortage and the large number of slums in the city. It is a well-known phenomenon that restrictions on the supply of land and the density of residential development greatly affect land costs leading to unaffordable housing across all segments.

One of the core complaints against private developers is that they only build for profits and not for social needs. They are accused of ignoring low cost mass housing segment because greater profits lie else ware. While this is true; in the present scenario, the pressures on land put due to such highly restrictive policies, make it quite impossible to create anything other than high-end housing and commercial spaces. Private developers are market-driven, they build housing that is profitable to provide.

Even today, the demand for high-end housing has not been met and there are numerous cases of people joining smaller flats to create larger ones. So when the demand in the highest strata of real estate isn’t fulfilled, how can one think about low cost housing? Unless the demand for high-end housing is met, they are bound to ignore other less desired market segments. The writer is a leading architect editor@expressindia.com