Being a Urban Development Minister
By Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi
Ever since ULC Act is repealed in most of the states, Urban Development (UD) Minister are left with very little administrative work on the chair. Many a times, chief ministers do not part with the port folio of UD hence Minister for state or of a cabinet rank are left with nothing concrete but to facilitate the position offered by the government for any minister of state or equivalent.
Sometimes, they do not have agenda for even two months in advance and work ad veloram on week on week basis. Political activities are the only thing left for them to show their admin powers.
If urban development is the name for just infrastructure development and looking after development of urban areas then why not to merge the ministry with Public Work Department and control most of the activities.
In our country, we have Housing Ministers and we have Urban Development Ministers and we Chief Ministers. All of them suppose to give us solutions for housing. Real Estate industry and trade are least bothered about housing minister since nothing comes under him/her as far as sanctioning of housing schemes are concerned. MHADA comes under housing ministry but it is for public housing and housing trade do not have any work with housing minster, funnily.
Neither housing finance is under the prerogative of housing minister at center nor it is within the hands of state housing minister. RBI and National housing banks report to finance minister who got nothing to do with housing problems in our country. Budget after budget, there are no provisions of economical housing units for millions of homeless. On the contrary, state governments have found a new revenue source of auctioning land for public and private housing, just like CIDCO, at a historically high reserved priced.
In my opinion we should not have housing ministry nor we need urban development minister, who are nothing but posts to be occupied by political figures to satisfy political egos. Neither of these ministries have sufficient statistics for projections nor they represent real estate trade in Lok Sabha or any Vidhan Sabhas.
We have co-operation minister to look into co-operative housing society’s issues and we have revenue minister to decide the property rates in stamp duty ready recknors or circle rates and for registration fees. We have slum improvement ministers for slum problems and we Public Works Ministers for Public works and infrastructures. We have actually forgotten the meaning of urban development and housing.
We have poverty alleviation along the housing portfolio. When poverty is a social unrest and we need housing also to be included along the social engineering. We have home ministers who got nothing to do with homes but law and order problems.
Housing got no Mai-Baap. Not a single authority or minister stands by trade related problems nor we have a leadership or will to solve housing problems in our great nation.
