Public Housing, not affordable housing

Public Housing, not affordable housing.

I laud the goal of Housing for All by 2022 as announced by PM Shri Narendra Modi. Many persons have taken it to mean that for the poor persons, we need to construct affordable housing. Given the wages for a large section of poor persons in India, any housing is not affordable for owning.

Take a person who is earning minimum wages of Rs 9000 per month. He spends about Rs 1500 for a room in Delhi in the poorer part of City. Given the other expenditure, this person has no way to squeeze out another 1500 to be able to afford an EMI of Rs 3000 per month. So even if we give a house for Rs 3 lakh, neither this person can afford to add the initial sum of say Rs 50000, nor can he service the loan. We need to remember that not all the persons get minimum wages.  

About 40 % of the population falls in this category. They can't even afford the "affordable houses."

For improving the life of these people we need to provide them with public housing at subsidized or affordable rents. Therefore, need is to construct a large number of government or Municipal houses and give a basic level of living to these people. And that is Public Housing. It needs to be extended to villages also. Because a clean and pucca house means less disease, better safety from the extreme cold /heat and better development of all the family members.  

What is termed as affordable housing is for Lower middle class. Even here we need to be cautious in developing policy in such a way that the subprime crisis of US in 2008 is not repeated in India in the year 2020 or 2025. This segment will need some calibrated support. Middle class and higher segments can be on their own. They can buy what they think they can afford. Free market will be the best solution albeit with better regulation for fair deal for customers.

If we do not pursue the above line, we will continue to have slums in cities.

 

Dated: 24 December 2015

Vision for Milk 2

India is the largest milk producing nation in the world. In 2013-14, our milk production was 132.4 million tonnes.

Do we produce enough milk for our people? 

In 2011-12, the availability of milk was 290 gm per person per day. (Data taken from NDDB website.)

This means not even one glass of milk for the individual. (Capacity of a steel tumbler is about 400 cc.)

We need to provide about 900 gm of milk per person per day.

If we keep the target of achieving this level in 10 years, we require growth rate of about 15 % year on year in quantitative terms.

Are we prepared for this? Is this doable? 

Increasing milk production is not easy. Following actions are required:

1. Increase the number of milch cattles. (It has a lead time. It can't happen overnight.)

2. Increase milk yield from each milch cattle. (Requires better animal feed. Different breed of cattle.)

3. Avoid wastages.  

Let us look at option 1 of increasing the cattle stock.  Each cow gives birth to only one calf at a time. We can expect only one calf per year. Over the life of a cow, she would produce 3 to 4 calves. Half of them are male. They can be used as draught animals. Other half are females.  These will give milk.

Roughly over five years,  one cow adds one and a half cows to the animal stock. But the mother cow gets old and dies. So the increase is possible to about 9 % only per year.  

Second task of increasing yield from each milk cattle requires good animal husbandry practices. In order to achieve this we require strengthening the institutional framework. I propose that we should create one agriculture university in each district which has a veterinary hospital attached to it. The other departments will focus on the crops of that area. Initially this may be opened as a college attached to a nearby university. But vision should be to develop each one into a university over a period of 10 years or so. 

These universities would be supported by Indian Council of Agriculture Research.  Some of the research labs of ICAR can be the kernel for the new Universities. These may be central universities.  While others can be State Universities. 

Parliamentary Reforms

I will focus on number of parliamentarians.  We began with 544 members of Lok Sabha in 1949 when we hada population of 37 crores. Now we have the population of 125 crore and number of LS Members continues to be same.  We  need  to increase this number to about 2500 effectively having one Lok Sabha member for every 5 lakh population. Out of this 5 lakh, there would be about 2.5 lakh adults and rest will be children. This is a manageable number.  Right now Parliamentarians are far disconnected from their constituents.

This may mean structural changes in the parliament building,  which is long overdue.  Central Hall can be  modified to accomodate the larger numbers.  Seating has to change.

Right now there is  so much emphasis on spoken word only. Each seat should be equipped with a computer screen in front, where the speech and the issue being debated is displayed. Option of translation to any of the scheduled languages should be made available.