The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a Seminar titled ‘India’s Urban Housing Opportunity: PMAY-U’ on Friday, November 22, 2024 from 4:00-5:30 pm (IST). The seminar featured a presentation by Debarpita Roy, Visiting Fellow – Urbanisation, CSEP. The presentation was based on the CSEP Working Paper ‘Deconstructing PMAY-U: What the Numbers Reveal’. This was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Low-income housing ecosystem and PMAY-U 2’ between Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Retd. Additional Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs & Former Director General, National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG); Raghav Garg, Promoter, Landcraft Developers & Member, Haryana Housing Board; and Shahana Chattaraj, Director – Research, World Resources Institute (WRI). The discussion was moderated by Debarpita Roy.

About the event

A recent CSEP working paper on the first phase of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban (PMAY-U) which is India’s and probably the world’s largest urban housing programme, highlights three challenge areas – scaling up the development of EWS (Households with an annual income of Rs 3 lakh or less) flats, addressing slum housing, and EWS households’ inadequate access to home loans from institutional sources. This seminar seeks to explore the following questions – What factors contribute to these challenges? How can these challenges be navigated? Answers to these questions hold the key for the recently announced PMAY-U 2.0 to be more effective than the first phase. Moreover, these answers are fundamental for improving the housing conditions and affordability, of India’s teeming urban masses.

Welcome Remarks

Laveesh Bhandari

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP. Dr Bhandari has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic, and social reforms in India, economic geography, and financial inclusion. He received his PhD in economics from Boston University for which he was awarded the Best Thesis in International Economics. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. Apart from applied economics research, Dr Bhandari has built, seeded, and exited from three companies in the research, analytics, and digital domains, including Indicus Analytics, a leading economic research firm. Currently, he is conducting research on issues of inclusion, India’s energy transition, and how it will impact the government as well as the economy.

Discussants

Rajiv Ranjan Mishra

Rajiv Ranjan Mishra is Retd. Additional Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. An alumnus of IIT, Kanpur, Rajiv Ranjan Mishra joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1987 and held several responsibilities in policy making and program implementation, particularly in the sectors of water resource management, river rejuvenation, urbanisation & housing, capacity building etc.

He made a significant contribution as Additional Secretary/Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, piloting several policies and path breaking legislations like the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, 2016 (RERA). He contributed to the development of the Affordable Housing Policy, Rental Housing, Model Tenancy Act, several fiscal incentives through budgetary announcements, the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, inclusion of affordable housing in the list of infrastructure, PPP models in affordable housing and also in the promotion of new & sustainable housing technologies for Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. He spearheaded the Namami Gange program as Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG). Currently he is Chief Advisor at National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

Raghav Garg

Raghav Garg is promoter of Landcraft & member at the Garg Group with over fifteen years of experience in real estate. The group runs various engineering colleges in Ghaziabad under the aegis of Krishna Institute of Engineering Technology (K.I.E.T). Raghav is actively working on a prop-tech venture and actively supports early stage companies.

He has been a pioneer in championing reforms in the affordable housing policy of Uttar Pradesh. Raghav has been appointed as a Member of the Haryana Housing Board. He holds a Masters in Management from the London Business School and a degree in law from Amity Law School, Noida.

Shahana Chattaraj

Shahana Chattaraj is Director of Research, at the World Resources Institute (WRI) Centre for Equitable Development. Working with governments, the private sector, civil society and communities, WRI’s Equity Center explores crucial questions about how the world can advance action to address climate change and improve human well-being, with a particular focus on environmental rights, governance and equitable access to land and natural resources rights for vulnerable and marginalised communities.

Shahana’s research interests lies at the intersection of cities, urbanisation and development, with a focus on comparative urban research; urban political economy, governance and planning; migration; the informal economy and the informalisation of work. Shahana has taught and held fellowships at Oxford University, the University of Pennsylvania and Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Public Affairs from Princeton University, a master’s degree in international development from MIT, and an undergraduate degree in Architecture. Prior to her PhD, she worked at the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank, as well as a community development organisation in Delhi.

Presenter & Moderator

Debarpita Roy

Debarpita Roy is Visiting Fellow – Urbanisation at CSEP. Previously, she has worked as a Fellow at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi. She has also taught statistics, urban and real estate economics courses to post graduate students of business administration at leading business schools. Her industry experience includes working with JLL, an international property consultancy firm in their Consulting and Research division, building up a Pan Indian real estate database. Her research interests encompass India’s contemporary urban issues and myriad facets of the urban economy. Her recent research is in the areas of affordable housing and municipal finance.

She has several publications to her name and regularly presents her research at conferences. She is a PhD in Economics from Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University and has an MA in Economics from Delhi School of Economics.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.