Chapter 2: Census Revelation Over the Rural Human Settlement Issues

India is a country of villages with as many as 16.78 crores of households domiciling out of the total number of 24.67 crores in the country (Census of India, 2011). The share of the rural households is in the order of over 68 per cent, notwithstanding that urbanisation has been increasing at a faster rate in recent times. Although in absolute terms the number of rural households has increased from 13.83 crores, in relative terms, the same has dwindled from over 73 per cent. Straightforwardly, 4 per cent of the rural households have reduced in the recent time. Similarly, the number of housing stock in rural areas constitutes 15.99 crores or 68 per cent in the total number of 23.61 crores. Coincidentally, the relative share of the rural housing stock has also dropped by four points from 72 per cent (Mahadeva, 2020). The substance is that the country is urbanising due to migration of the workforce, yet the rural dominance in the composition. However, from the development perspective, rural India owing to its size and dominance should have had its share in terms of the public resource allocations, public policies thrust, development of the housing market and importantly meeting the chief basic need of housing for the homeless families. But that did not happen in the last 75 years of independence and the development of strategic interventions. During this time of planning, most of the public finance was garnered by the urban development activities, and as a result, rural development activities were either pushed back or have been neglected. As part of the infrastructure development strategy for the industry, the impetus was given to provide employment opportunities to the growing migrants of the urban areas. Similarly, while making the market force a development partner, the business potentials of rural areas with tailor-made products have never been harnessed. Instead, rural areas were made to depend entirely on the limited government interventions – be it manufacturing, development, infrastructure, employment, etc. The other pathetic situation is that rural housing development was completely expected to take place without the presence of the housing market and its sub-markets, especially the financial services. As a result, the public development in the rural housing front has proved ineffective, half-hearted, incompatible, unrealistic and whatnot.