As part of its field engagements, IHF supports partners in handholding beneficiaries of housing schemes in India to ensure their effective implementation. IHF has been supporting Haryana’s State Mission for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Urban (PMAY-U) since March 2018, to establish systems that assist in bridging gaps for low-income groups to access housing. The IHF field team in Haryana is working in cooperation with the State Urban Development Authority, Haryana (SUDAH), which is the state level nodal agency (SLNA) for implementation of PMAY in Haryana to increase coverage and target achievement under the Beneficiary Led Construction (BLC) and Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) verticals.
Towards this goal, IHF supported the City Level Technical Cell (CLTC) for PMAY-U in Sonipat to conduct a training camp for BLC beneficiaries in Ward 03 of the city. There are about 98 beneficiaries under BLC in the chosen ward, comprising 80 cases of new housing and 18 cases of enhancement housing, spread across three detailed project reports (DPRs). The training camp was conducted at the common place choupal Kabir Bhawan, in the presence of the municipal councillor from Ward 03 Shri Dilwar, and the PMAY CLTC staff Shri Yoginder.
Outreach and Participation:
A week before the scheduled date, the municipal councillor was intimated about the planned training and the extract of the beneficiary list from the DPRs was shared with him for his records. He used his network to reach out to nearly 50 beneficiaries during the days up to the meeting. Of these, about 20 people came for the full training, while a few others showed up for parts of it based on their work schedules. There were others who were not approved beneficiaries but showed up to check the status of their application under PMA.
Content:
During the training camp, attendees were explained the nuances of the BLC Scheme including:
Explaining the importance of fund flow stages and how beneficiaries should align their construction work according to the same.
Explaining dwelling unit (DU) size norms and NBC norms as per the building code.
Understanding the costing of the home as locally calculated and comparing it to the DPR.
Homing into the importance of beneficiary contribution and accordingly getting into the ideas of:
Savings (Income vs Saving) and the importance of this during home construction.
Building a Small Workable Footprint of a larger intended plan (so households may continue to build incrementally post house completion as necessary and feasible).
Not to use money allocated for housing toward other purposes.
That they shall not receive the last subsidy in case of an incomplete house.
Aligning lending and repaying cycles according to the fund flow stages.
Further, the importance of regular savings was stressed upon as well as the importance of institutional borrowing. Other topics covered were concepts of material aggregation to save building costs, thumb rules towards ensuring construction quality, the significance of geo-tagging for increasing transparency, and the process and manner of submission of documents toward securing their letters of intent (LoIs).
Observations from the ground:
Beneficiaries build on only half their land and retain a part of their earlier structure, due to challenges such as:
Single piece of Land shared by other relatives.
Shared walls and partitions with neighboring homes.
Some structures have become effectively retaining walls in case of building on an undulating terrain and are later useful for the new structure
To have shelter, while their house is being built.
Some others have been renters with empty pieces of purchased land that cannot be geotagged (you need to have a house and have it’s walls and roof captured as geo-tagged photographs, toward fulfillment of conditions on the Bhuvan app).
Due to challenges in the process of Demand Survey, some deserving applicants have not been included in the DPR.
Outcomes:
Post the workshop, many beneficiaries from Ward 03 and nearby areas were informed about the process through word of mouth and approached the municipal corporation to learn more.
Viable leads were converted into files, in due process, and are en route to receiving their approvals and subsequently LoIs.
The number of files submitted at the municipal corporation has grown from 35 to 85 currently.