Summary

The PMAY (BLC+ISSR/AHP) scheme has significantly impacted the lifestyle of the beneficiaries. It has changed the beneficiary’s lifestyle and created an identity in the society, where their kids started going to schools regularly and can study in the evenings under descent lighting. Especially in the ISSR/AHP projects, where majority of the households are in the EWS category, do not need to worry about their seasonal floodings into their houses during monsoons, access to water supply and sanitation inside their houses and a gate outside their house and settlement. This process assisted with NGOs and other civic society bodies have streamlined them with respect to formal housing and documentations for having ownership of incrementality in socio-economic ladder. Whereas the BLC projects were mostly opted by the beneficiaries from tribal community who have small piece of land in the periphery of the cities.

However, there are certain levels of dissatisfactions from the beneficiaries with the governance and implementation processes where the priority was given to beneficiaries with elderly and differently abled in the ISSR/AHP projects, but prioritisation was not equitable across all segments. One of the beneficiaries highlighted that she was allotted a house under ISSR/AHP as a priority who is a widow and a senior citizen, but could not able to arrange the deposit money of Rs 50,000/- in the stipulated time period, and the ULB officials have delayed her allotment and now she currently got a house at the 2 nd floor in Premnagar Birsamuda project. Households who reported having strong social capital could be able to make the down payment on time using their savings, borrowing money from their family members and borrow funds from formal sources such as employers. On the other hand, majority of the beneficiaries were from EWS segment with no savings and need to rely on informal money lenders to make the down payment on time. In addition, the BLC beneficiaries face issues related to awareness of the PMAY scheme, where they were advised by the Parshad (ward councillor) to take support from the Thekedar (contractor) to help them with the construction of the house, where the contractor cheated them by taking the money from beneficiary’s bank accounts and not finishing the house construction. As majority of the BLC beneficiaries are from Tribal community, they were not aware of the construction techniques using cement and concrete as construction materials. Moreover they were demanded by the PMAY evaluation and monitoring representatives from the ULBs to pay Rs 5,000/- at every stage of construction, where they take pictures at every stage of construction and update in PMAY MIS data to release funds on time for the beneficiaries.

In conclusion, the end-users are the actual effected families who were impacted with the stringent guidelines and the governance structures of PMAY in addition to the issues with access to finance and increase in expenditure related to additional utility charges incurred due to the poor ventilation and thermal discomfort of the modern concrete buildings as compared to their previous mud- structure houses.