About 1.6 billion people worldwide lack safe and affordable housing, as per a new multimedia publication titled ‘The Big Idea: Global Spread of Affordable Housing’ published by Ashoka Full Economic Citizenship and NextBillion. What is frightening is that this number is set to triple by 2020! That is only 8 years away!

As a professional working in this field, I see the urgency to evolve solutions that can be scaled quickly and effectively to take in a variety of geographical and sociocultural contexts. I also see this is not a government-led job. Private corporations need to come forward with innovative ideas and partnerships and the government must play a key role in unlocking inner city land, providing incentives and creating supporting policy to sustain such efforts.

Today, the poor are considered nobody’s problem. Demolition of low-income squatter settlements by police force is about the only response local governments have towards the poor, with hardly any efforts to provide much-needed housing. Why is it so hard to see that the economy of a city depends heavily on low-income people, for they are the workforce, the life blood. If slums are unclean and ugly and need to be demolished to preserve the quality of life of a neighborhood or city (and this is the argument most used to dislocate slums), then surely the powers that be must see that a city that does not have the so-called ugly slums is more desirable and attractive and therefore on the path to rapid economic growth? How come the connection between quality of life and low-income settlements is easily made when it is in favor of the rich, but easily discarded when it is used to make a case to provide facilities for the poor?

I recently wrote an article on the JNNURM, reviewing the scheme that is concluding this year. I studied deeply the recommendations made by the Isher Ahluwalia Committee and the most heartening thing I found was the premise that that cities must provide basic services and decent housing to every citizen regardless of income and class. How is this to be made possible is another story. It is a complex issue and one that our poorly staffed and financially weak municipalities would be hard put to resolve.

I look forward to reading the book mentioned above, which profiles e3ssays, videos and photographs from innovators in this field from across the world. In a nation capable of innovation in so many areas, one can hope safe and affordable housing will become a subject of focus for some brilliant minds!