Dismal progress in social housing

• • The Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP), launched in 2008 to provide an interest subsidy of five per cent on a loan amount of Rs.100,000 to the economically weaker section and lower income group, has so far benefited only 7,805 people as against the 2012 target of 310,000.
  • Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which has a provision of Rs.50,000 crore for the period 2005-2012, is no better. Only about 30 per cent of houses sanctioned for the poor under this scheme have been built
  • ISHUP has failed to deliver because it is conceptually flawed. Policymakers assumed that the poor had access to land and needed only financial support to build their houses
  • Since 1998, after the Construction Task Force set up by the U.K. government published its seminal report ‘Rethinking Construction', local authorities earnestly adopted best building practices