NEW DELHI: India’s housing schemes for the poor in the urban and rural areas, launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana are setting an example for the Global South as a tool for inclusion, gender justice and empowerment of the economically weaker sections.
“In India, the push for “Housing for All” has increasingly been framed as a human rights agenda that links shelter with equality, social security and self-respect for the poorest citizens. Within this framework, the focus on women-led ownership in major housing schemes marks an important shift from seeing women as dependents to recognising them as rights holders and asset owners in their own name, ” according to an article in Colombo-based Asian News Post.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in its rural and urban forms, the second phase of PMAY Urban, and the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme together show how housing policy is being used as a tool for inclusion, gender justice and empowerment of the economically weaker sections, the article states.
In rural India, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin explicitly connects the idea of a pucca house with dignity and social inclusion of the rural poor. An advisory issued under PMAY Gramin directs that women members must be included in sanction and ownership details, either as sole owners or as joint owners with male members, and even allows adding women as secondary owners where houses were initially sanctioned only in the name of men.