In The Name Of Housing

A recently published study on the circumstances surrounding the trope of housing in Mumbai attempts to document, probe, and represent the various housing typologies in the city, simultaneously analysing the urgent questions of space organisation, infrastructure, and the community.

- Sameep Padora

The alarming deficit of affordable housing in the country has received a fair amount of attention in current and preceding governments. The latest central government mandate of ‘Housing for All’ found impetus in the 2016 budget, backed by a slew of fiscal incentives to promote the building of affordable homes.

In the city of Mumbai, burgeoning real estate prices have further exacerbated this shortfall. To ameliorate this bottleneck, the state government recently announced the construction of 1.1 million affordable homes over the next four years in the city alone. While all of these policy mandates speak of well-intentioned bureaucratic and political machinery, there is absolutely no imagination of what the physical form of this housing is to be. So despite there being strong government will and frameworks, there is a danger that real estate pressures will eventually subvert the intent of this policy and consequently, the quality and diversity of life and livelihood within these projects.