Enhancing rural housing in Cochin

[Thompson11]

The problem of housing is not only acute in the urban areas but also in the rural areas of Cochin. Formal financing institutions have mainly catered to the housing credit needs of the people living in the urban areas. On account of their reluctance to operate in the rural areas, the Ministry of Urban Development has proposed an Action Plan for rural housing to meet the requirements of the people in the rural areas.

The Action Plan envisages the constitution of district rural housing agencies, which would be responsible for the formulation of master plans to suit a variety of local needs such as shelter up gradation, new construction activities and development of infrastructure, and for ensuring its implementation through mobilization of resources, monitoring and evaluation.

The housing finance system set up under the Action Plan would not only ensure increased flow of housing loans from the banking sector and cooperatives but would also encourage rural households to augment their savings for housing. Implementation of the aforesaid proposal of the Ministry of Urban Development through the state governments would go a long way towards mitigating the hardships faced by rural population to mobilize adequate resources for their housing requirements.

Due to the increasing demand for Real Estate Cochin City and its suburbs have seen great changes in property values. Most of the urban fringes are now out of bounds for the middle class people. People moving into the rural areas now have to face the problem of fast appreciation in land values and the lack of the earlier rural ambience. In the rural hinterlands, since the leading builders are unwilling to make a move, the effort of the housing cooperatives to effect a major change in the state of affairs must be appreciated.