It has been suggested that this article be merged into Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs . (Discuss) Proposed since June 2024. |
Agency overview | |
---|---|
Formed | 27 May 2004 |
Dissolved | 6 July 2017 |
Jurisdiction | Government of India |
Headquarters | New Delhi |
Website | mhupa |
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation was a ministry of the Government of India responsible for urban poverty, housing, and employment programs. It involved in national policy decisions and coordinates with Indian central ministries, state governments, and central sponsor programs.
On 6 July 2017, the ministry was re-united with the Ministry of Urban Development to form the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. [1]
The ministry was first created in 1999 as the "Ministry of Urban Affairs and Poverty Alleviation" and existed alongside the Ministry of Urban Development. On 22 November 1999, the ministry was renamed as the "Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation" and was concerned for generating employment in urban areas. On 27 May 2000, the ministry was merged along with the Ministry of Urban Development and renamed as the "Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation".
Following the formation of the First Manmohan Singh ministry on 22 May 2004, the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation was re-bifurcated into the "Ministry of Urban Development" and the "Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation". The Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation was renamed as the "Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation" on 1 June 2006. The ministry was re-merged with the Ministry of Urban Development on 6 July 2017 to form the "Ministry of Urban Affairs .
The Indian Constitution has allocated responsibility for housing and urban development to the state; and the 74th amendment to the Constitution delegates some responsibility to the local governments. The ministry was responsible for the national capital territory of Delhi and union territories. It also provided finances through federal institutions and allocates resources to the state governments. The ministry supported the country's external housing and urban development assistance programs. [2]
The ministry had administrative control over the National Buildings Organisation (NBO) attached office and the Hindustan Prefab Limited (HPL) and Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) public sector undertakings. It was also responsible for the following statutory and autonomous bodies:
For poverty alleviation programs to be successful, the following sectors should realise improvements: Income generation, health, shelter, education, environment and infrastructure. Environmental Improvement for Urban Slum, Urban Basic Service programs, Nehru Rozgar Yojana, Shelter and Infrastructural facilities, and Low Cost Sanitation Night Shelter are examples of schemes to meet these objectives. [3]
The Ministry had constituted a Committee on Streamlining Approval Procedures for Real Estate Projects (SAPREP) [4] under the chairmanship of Dhanendra Kumar, former chairman of Competition Commission of India. Amongst other things, the concept of single window clearance as advocated by this committee report draw parallels with government's effort towards improving ease of doing business in the country. [5]
The Government of India has launched various programs since its independence, such as some of the five-year plans, to alleviate poverty and address the widening income gap, both, amongst the upper and lower classes of society, and amongst the rural and urban parts of the country. [6] For instance, the "Eighth Plan policy guidelines envisages integrated approach to alleviation of urban poverty and servicing the urban poor with basic facilities so that their quality of life improves." [7]
As trends in the Gini coefficient reflect, [6] the income gaps were not as pronounced until the early 1980s, but the situation has been continually getting worse since. Misplaced priorities of the Indian Government and bad planning of subsidy programs is largely responsible for this.[ citation needed ] Hosting the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010 that cost the exchequer an approximate ₹110 billion (US$1.3 billion), excluding the price of non-sports related infrastructure, is a case in point. [8]
While newly launched programs like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), Food Security Act, Mid-day Meals and Bharat Nirman Yojana have demonstrated success in the initial stages, their performance over the long-run still remains to be seen. The shortsightedness of the Indian government often leads it to launch populist programs that may not necessarily work well. Low-hanging fruit like increasing worker's minimum wage can go a long way in achieving the goal of poverty alleviation, but are yet to be taken up in spite of reminders from leading economists. [9]
On 6 September 2012 by the Union Minister, Kumari Selja, introduced to the Street Vendors Act, 2014 in the Lok Sabha. [10] [11]
No. | Portrait | Minister (Birth-Death) | Term of office | Political party | Ministry | Prime Minister | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
From | To | Period | |||||||
Minister of Urban Affairs and Poverty Alleviation | |||||||||
1 | Satyanarayan Jatiya (born 1946) MP for Ujjain | 13 October 1999 | 22 November 1999 | 40 days | Bharatiya Janata Party | Vajpayee III | Atal Bihari Vajpayee | ||
Minister of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation | |||||||||
2 | Jagmohan (1927–2021) MP for New Delhi | 22 November 1999 | 26 November 1999 | 4 days | Bharatiya Janata Party | Vajpayee III | Atal Bihari Vajpayee | ||
3 | Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa (born 1936) Rajya Sabha MP for Punjab | 26 November 1999 | 27 May 2000 | 183 days | Shiromani Akali Dal | ||||
Minister of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation | |||||||||
4 | Selja Kumari (born 1962) MP for Ambala (MoS, I/C) | 23 May 2004 | 1 June 2006 | 2 years, 9 days | Indian National Congress | Manmohan I | Manmohan Singh | ||
Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation | |||||||||
5 | Selja Kumari (born 1962) MP for Ambala (MoS, I/C until 22 May 2009) | 1 June 2006 | 22 May 2009 | 2 years, 355 days | Indian National Congress | Manmohan I | Manmohan Singh | ||
28 May 2009 | 28 October 2012 | 3 years, 214 days | Manmohan II | ||||||
6 | Ajay Maken (born 1964) MP for New Delhi | 28 October 2012 | 16 June 2013 | 231 days | |||||
7 | Girija Vyas (born 1946) MP for Chittorgarh | 17 June 2013 | 26 May 2014 | 343 days | |||||
8 | M. Venkaiah Naidu (born 1949) Rajya Sabha MP for Karnataka, till 2016 Rajya Sabha MP for Rajasthan, from 2016 | 26 May 2014 | 6 July 2017 | 3 years, 41 days | Bharatiya Janata Party | Modi I | Narendra Modi | ||
Merged with Ministry of Urban Development to form the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs | |||||||||
No. | Portrait | Minister (Birth-Death) | Term of office | Political party | Ministry | Prime Minister | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
From | To | Period | |||||||
1 | Babul Supriyo (born 1970) MP for Asansol | 9 November 2014 | 12 July 2016 | 1 year, 246 days | Bharatiya Janata Party | Modi I | Narendra Modi | ||
2 | Rao Inderjit Singh (born 1951) MP for Gurgaon | 5 July 2016 | 6 July 2017 | 1 year, 1 day | |||||
Merged with Ministry of Urban Development to form the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs | |||||||||
Girija Vyas is an Indian politician, poet and author. She was a Member of the 15th Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India, from the Chittorgarh constituency and former president of National Commission for Women of India.
The Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana was a scheme launched by the Government of India to gain the objective of providing gainful employment for the rural poor. From 21 February 2003, EAS became an allocation-based scheme. The programme was implemented through the Panchayati Raj institutions.
Dharmendra Pradhan is an Indian politician who is serving as Union Minister of Education since 2021. He also served as Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in the Government of India from 2021 to 2024. An alumnus of Talcher Autonomous College and Utkal University, he has also been the Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and the Minister of Steel.
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was a massive city-modernization scheme launched by the Government of India under the Ministry of Urban Development. It envisaged a total investment of over $20 billion over seven years. It is named after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. The aim is to encourage reforms and fast track planned development of identified cities. Focus is to be on efficiency in urban infrastructure and service delivery mechanisms, community participation, and accountability of ULBs/ Parastatal agencies towards citizens.
The Ministry of Rural Development, a branch of the Government of India, is entrusted with the task of accelerating the socio-economic development of rural India. Its focus is on special rural grants for health and education, piped filtered drinking water programs, public and affordable housing programs, public work programs and grants for rural roads and infrastructure. It also provides special grants to rural local bodies.
Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia is an Indian politician of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and a senior Member of Parliament in his 32nd year as a Parliamentarian.
Jagdambika Pal is an Indian politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for 1 day in 1998. He is also currently a member of the Lok Sabha since 2009. In the 15th Lok Sabha he represented the Indian National Congress, until he resigned on 7 March 2014. He joined the BJP in 2014 and re-entered the Lok Sabha.
Prime Minister’s New 15 point Programme for minorities is a programme launched by Indian government for welfare of religious minorities in furtherance of reports by committees such as the Sachar Committee Report that highlighted that minorities, especially Muslims, in the country were often in a worse socio-economic and political condition than communities such as the Scheduled Casts and Scheduled tribes communities that have been oppressed over millennia through the caste system. It pegged the status of minorities on various indicators such as nutrition, health, education et al. of minorities and specially Muslims at an abysmally poor level. The 15 point program was the government's response to these finding by laying down guidelines to target minorities in schemes and entitlements that are already in place and designing and executing new schemes aimed at the empowerment of these groups. The programme advocated allocating 15% of plan outlays of welfare schemes identified under the 15 point programme. Mainly, issues of education, credit, housing, employment and communal harmony fall under its ambit.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) is a ministry of the Government of India with executive authority over the formulation and administration of the rules and regulations and laws relating to the housing and urban development in India. The ministry was under the charge of Venkaiah Naidu and was given to Hardeep Singh Puri when Naidu was elected Vice President of India. The Ministry became independent from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation in 2004, but was later re-merged with it in 2017.
Ashok Tapiram Patil, also known as Nana Patil, is an Indian politician and a member of the 16th Lok Sabha. He represents the Jalgaon constituency of Maharashtra and is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) political party.
Bhaskarrao Patil is an Indian politician from Maharashtra belonging to Indian National Congress who served as the Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from 1990 to 1998. He was a member in the 12th, 13th and 15th Lok Sabha’s. He was also a member of Maharashtra State Assembly (M.L.A) three times. He was elected from the Biloli Constituency in the years 1990, 1995 and 2004.
Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana is a government-run health insurance programme for the Indian poor. The scheme aims to provide health insurance coverage to the unrecognised sector workers belonging to the BPL category and their family members shall be beneficiaries under this scheme. It provides for cashless insurance for hospitalisation in public as well as private hospitals. The scheme started enrolling on April 1, 2008 and has been implemented in 25 states of India. A total of 36 million families have been enrolled as of February 2014. Initially, RSBY was a project under the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Now it has been transferred to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare from April 1, 2015
Pradhan Mantri Gramin Aawas Yojana is a social welfare programme under the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, to provide housing for the rural poor in India. A similar scheme for urban poor was launched in 2015 as Housing for All by 2022. Indira Awas Yojana was launched in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, as one of the major flagship programs of the Ministry of Rural Development to construct houses for the Below Poverty Line population in the villages.
Homelessness is a major issue in India. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines 'homeless' as those who do not live in a regular residence. The United Nations Economic and Social Council Statement has a broader definition for homelessness; it defines homelessness as follows: ‘When we are talking about housing, we are not just talking about four walls and a roof. The right to adequate housing is about security of tenure, affordability, access to services and cultural adequacy. It is about protection from forced eviction and displacement, fighting homelessness, poverty and exclusion. India defines 'homeless' as those who do not live in Census houses, but rather stay on pavements, roadsides, railway platforms, staircases, temples, streets, in pipes, or other open spaces. There are 1.77 million homeless people in India, or 0.15% of the country's total population, according to the 2011 census consisting of single men, women, mothers, the elderly, and the disabled. However, it is argued that the numbers are far greater than accounted by the point in time method. For example, while the Census of 2011 counted 46,724 homeless individuals in Delhi, the Indo-Global Social Service Society counted them to be 88,410, and another organization called the Delhi Development Authority counted them to be 150,000. Furthermore, there is a high proportion of mentally ill and street children in the homeless population. There are 18 million street children in India, the largest number of any country in the world, with 11 million being urban. Finally, more than three million men and women are homeless in India's capital city of New Delhi; the same population in Canada would make up approximately 30 electoral districts. A family of four members has an average of five homeless generations in India.
Street Vendors Act, 2014 is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted to regulate street vendors in public areas and protect their rights. It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 6 September 2012 by then Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja. The Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on 6 September 2013 and by the Rajya Sabha on 19 February 2014. The bill received the assent of the President of India on 4 March 2014. The Act came into force from 1 May 2014.
Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana is a rural development programme broadly focusing upon the development in the villages which includes social development, cultural development and spread motivation among the people on social mobilization of the village community. The programme was launched by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi on the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan, on 11 October 2014.
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana or DDUAY is one of the Government of India scheme for helping the poor by providing skill training. It replaces Aajeevik. The Government of India has provisioned ₹500 crore (US$60 million) for the scheme. The objective of the scheme is to train 0.5 million people in urban areas per annum from 2016. In rural areas the objective is to train 1 million people by 2017. Further, in urban areas, services like SHG promotion, training centres, vendors markets, and permanent shelters for homeless. The aim of the scheme is skill development of both rural and urban India as per requisite international standards.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) is a credit-linked subsidy scheme by the Government of India to facilitate access to affordable housing for the low and moderate-income residents of the country. It envisaged a target of building 2 crore (20 million) affordable houses by 31 March 2022. It has two components: Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana(Urban) (PMAY-U) for the urban poor and Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin) (PMAY-G and also PMAY-R) for the rural poor, the former administered by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the latter by Ministry of Rural Development. This scheme converges with other schemes to ensure that houses have a toilet, Saubhagya Scheme for universal electricity connection, Ujjwala Yojana LPG connection, access to drinking water and Jan Dhan banking facilities, etc.
Skill India or the National Skills Development Mission of India is a campaign launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is managed by the National Skills Development Corporation of India.
The Nyuntam Aay Yojana was a proposed social welfare programme by the Indian National Congress in its 2019 general election manifesto. It promised that the party, if voted to power in the 2019 Indian general election, would enact a law under which it would distribute cash to the bottom 20 per cent of India's families in terms of wealth, as a minimum guarantee programme. These households would each receive up to ₹72,000 (US$860) a year, a program the Congress claimed would benefit 250 million people in India.