by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Investing, Property
New Delhi : Fostering robust partnerships and seeking a collective and collaborative approach towards green, accessible, functional and liveable housing will be what experts from GRIHA Council and UNSW Sydneys School of Built Environment will focus on at the 10th Griha Summit being held here December 10-12.
Ahead of the summit, for which GRIHA Council has for the first time partnered with a foreign institution, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, a curtain raiser was held at the UNSW India Centre, attended by Professor Helen Lochhead, Dean, UNSW School of Built Environment and Sanjay Seth, Senior Director – Sustainable Habitat Programme, The TERI and Chief Executive Officer, GRIHA Council and representatives from business and industry, NGOs, the UN Human Settlements Programme and think tanks.
Eminent Indian architect, Professor B.V. Doshi, who is the first Indian to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Award, will be felicitated during the summit including a video interview with him and UNSW’s Pritzker prize winner Professor Glenn Murcutt. Doshi is also expected to address one of the plenary sessions, Seth announced.
Seth said the partnership with UNSW is the “first time that GRIHA is being co-created with international partnership.
“It is a coming together of two institutes of repute, and both will be deliberating on issues critical in the developmental agenda of the government of India,” Seth noted.
“Much of the habitat has to be put in place, and the next decade will see much more happening,” he said, adding that the partnership would be very important in the pursuit of excellence in the setting up of the development agenda.
Professor Helen Lochhead, Dean School of Built Environment at UNSW and President of the Australian Architect’s Association, said UNSW was happy to be collaborating with GRIHA. She termed it a partnership that would see both sides collaborating in education and research and that GRIHA was just the start of a long-term and collaborative association.
She said the UNSW School of Built Environment is rated among the top in Australia, and is ranked 23 globally in the QS ranking. “We focus on green, functional, liveable and sustainable architecture, and also make sure we work in collaboration with industry and research policies,” said Lochhead.
She said the opportunity to work with Griha and Teri would be a way to help “bring real change in the world we live in”.
The GRIHA Summit will discuss sustainable building policies, tools and techniques and exhibitions showcasing sustainable building materials, construction practices and technologies. The December 11-12 plenary sessions would see important issues being discussed with equal participation of experts from both institutes.
Noted Indian-Australian materials scientist from UNSW, Veena Sahajwalla, and Professor Deo Prasad, who deals with zero carbon, would be addressing the sessions. UNSW President and Vice Chancellor Ian Jacobs will also be participating at GRIHA.
Health, smart cities, smart transport, waste management, innovations, energy efficiency, would be among 16 thematic tracks in the sessions.
Participants expressed hope that raising public awareness on environmental and sustainability issues could be an integral objective of the Summit along with a strong implementation programme that has the support of all stakeholders.
Amit Dasgupta, India country director UNSW, said that the co-creation of GRIHA by TERI and UNSW was a reflection of UNSW’s India Strategy where cutting edge research could be collaboratively used to build a sustainable, green and liveable habitats. “Our job today is to focus on how we might partner with government, business & industry, NGOs and other stake-holders so that we might transform lives for the better.”
The Narendra Modi government has embarked on a programme to provide housing for all by 2022 that includes rehabilitation of slum dwellers, promotion of affordable housing and subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction.
According to estimates, half of India’s population would reside in urban areas by 2030 and India is expected to add the largest number of urban dwellers by 2050.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Constructions of the Israeli settlement Ramot continue over the Palestinian lands in Jerusalem, on November 22, 2017.
Jerusalem: The Israeli authorities on Thursday approved the construction of hundreds of new Jewish-only housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports.
“The [Israeli] Jerusalem Municipality’s planning and construction committee has approved the construction of 3,000 new housing units at the Gilo [settlement] in southern Jerusalem,” Israeli radio reported.
“The planned settlement units will be built on an area of approximately 280 dunams [around 252 square km], most of which is owned by Palestinians,” it added.
“This is a historic day for the city of Jerusalem,” Meir Turjeman, chairman of the municipal planning committee, was quoted as saying by the broadcaster.
“We approved the construction of thousands of new housing units in the Gilo settlement with a view to encouraging more young [Jewish Israeli] couples to come to Jerusalem,” Turjeman said.
“We are committed to building wherever possible in order to increase Jerusalem’s Jewish majority,” he added.
Last year, Israel’s Channel 10 reported on plans to build 300,000 new Jerusalem housing units as part of a so-called “Greater Jerusalem” bill aimed at annexing settlements built in the occupied West Bank.
According to Channel 10, most of the units would be constructed in areas located beyond the Green Line, in reference to territories that Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Roughly 600,000 Israeli settlers currently live on more than 100 Jewish-only settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.
The Palestinians want these areas, along with the Gaza Strip, for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories” and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity on the land as illegal.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate finance, Corporate Governance, Investing, Large Enterprise, Property
Santosh Kumar Gangwar
New Delhi : Even as Union Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar on Tuesday said real estate players will play a significant role in realising the aim of ‘Housing for All’ by 2022, realtors demanded setting up of a fund by the Centre for completion of stuck projects.
“Real estate developers will play an important role in realising our government’s vision of Housing for All by 2022. This will also mean mass urbanisation but this should happen without the proliferation of slums. Real estate developers and NAREDCO can play an important role in it,” Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said at the 14th national convention of National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) here.
NAREDCO said both the government and private sectors needed to support their endeavour.
Raheja Developers CMD Naveen Raheja said: “More than 250 industries depend on real estate sector. The economy can move forward and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Housing for All can be realised. But for that to happen, we need government’s support. The government should help and set up a fund for completion of stuck-up projects.”
Developers felt that creation of such fund would help realtors and home buyers alike since incomplete projects facing problems could be completed due to the move.
Uncertainty in the environment and recent developments like Goods and Services Tax implementation and Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) have only added to the woes of the developers, the realtors said.
“Developers felt that a change in mindset towards the sector is needed for resolution of the problems it is facing. With the government’s support they felt that good times for the sector are round the corner,” NAREDCO said in a statement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise
Mumbai, (IANS) Tata Housing Development Company’s subsidiary Tata Value Homes on Monday announced raising $25 million from British development finance institution CDC to strengthen affordable housing projects in India.
“Investment from CDC will help us further our commitment towards delivering quality living spaces to low and middle income groups in the country,” said Tata Housing chief executive Brotin Banerjee in a statement.
The British government-owned CDC was founded in 1948 with the mission to build businesses across Africa and South Asia and to create jobs and make a lasting difference in the lives of people from the poorest places.
“We’ve made this investment because affordable housing in India is highly a developmental sector because it creates a high number of construction jobs per dollar invested, and will increase access to housing for India’s emerging middle class,” said Srini Nagarajan from CDC in the statement.
According to the statement, Tata Value Homes delivered 3,000 homes across various projects in the country last year.
Established in 1984, Tata Housing Development Company Public limited is a subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi addressing at the launching ceremony of the Skill India Mission, on the occasion of the World Youth Skills Day, in New Delhi on July 15, 2015. (File Photo)
By Abhirup Bhunia
New Delhi:(IANS/IndiaSpend) Less than seven years are left for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious Housing for All scheme aimed at providing a home to all the urban poor by 2022 – especially as cities grow and migrants flow in from distressed rural areas.
This means an estimated 44,000 homes will have to be built every day or 16 million every year.
IndiaSpend has identified six hurdles that the government must reckon with as it attempts to meet this target:
- Cities are growing: Two Indian metros, Delhi and Mumbai were among the 10 largest urban agglomerations in the world, as on 2014, while another, Kolkata is set to be among the world’s top fifteen by 2030, according to the UN. There were 0.9 million homeless people in urban India as per the 2011 Census, in addition to a slum population of roughly 65 million. More than 90 percent of the ensuing housing shortage is constituted by what are called economically-weaker sections and low-income groups, according to government data.
- A migrant flood is coming: People from India’s distressed rural areas, home to 833 million people, according to the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) released earlier this month, are likely to flood into cities and towns in growing numbers as agricultural growth rates flounder. About 670 million people in rural areas live on less than Rs.33 a day, as IndiaSpend reported. India’s urban population is estimated to reach 600 million by 2031, up from about 380 million in 2011. Migrants make up a sizeable chunk of India’s urban population, last estimated at 35 percent by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 2007-08.
- Indian slum populations are high: About 17 percent of urban India – or about 65 million people – today live in slums. While this data is reflected in the Census, on a globally comparable index, the proportion of urban population living in slums in India is high.
- Land will be hard to find: An estimated 2 lakh hectares of land will be required to build homes for the poor and plug housing shortages. To deal with the land shortage, some experts have called for vertical expansion by way of floor space index (FSI) relaxations. Mumbai has recently effected some FSI reform. However, most Indian cities are densely populated, with densities running into tens of thousands per square kilometre.
- Maintaining standards will be a challenge: The sub-components of the Housing For All scheme include new units; credit-linked subsidies; beneficiary-led upgradation/construction; and upgrading/redevelopment of slum households. In the rush to build, the quality of construction will be a challenge. A third of existing housing units in India are already of a poor standard. This, of course, is not unlike several other emerging economies.
- Breaking out of the regulatory maze: Among the most difficult challenges of Modi’s housing scheme would be the regulatory maze that enmeshes the construction-approval process in India, which the World Bank ranks as among the worst globally. In India, the approval process between land acquisition and commencement of construction can take as long as two years, real-estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle estimates.
(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform. Abhirup Bhunia can be contacted at webmaster@indiaspend.org. The views expressed are personal)
