In any other country the startling data released recently by the 63rd round survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), indicating that over 300 million citizens of India are obliged to make do with 60 sq. ft housing space per capita — equivalent to the size of an American jail cell — and that the majority of the population has only 100 sq. ft for living, cooking, sleeping and toilet needs, would perhaps have toppled the government, or at least provoked great anguish and soul-searching. But in resurgent India, which the Congress party’s dream team of ministers assures us has marvellously strong fundamentals, this shocking statistic hasn’t provoked a murmur of protest.
Against the backdrop of the country’s housing shortage accentuating after independence and the percentage of population with less than 100 sq.ft lebensraum in urban India having risen from 46 to 55, in Bangalore, a woman government minister, her generous heart bleeding for her colleagues, has proposed greenfield construction of 30 new 10,000 sq.ft state-of-the-art bungalows for them, within convenient distance of the city’s new international airport.
Behind the pathetic quality of the nation’s housing stock, is a story of chronic neglect and callousness of the neta-babu conspiracy of the past half century rooted in a reported statement of the patrician original Great Socialist, to the effect that the climate of India is so warm that (poor) people can comfortably sleep under open skies. Unsurprisingly, the abysmal quality of its housing stock apart, the country’s housing shortage is estimated at 25 million dwelling units.
Therefore centrally planned socialist India presents the curious paradox of a subcontinent-sized nation (3.28 million sq. km) living in unbelievably cramped conditions, in an economy of chronic shortages. The inevitable outcome of small minds undertaking great enterprises.