Homes can shelter India’s China dream after Covid

Homes can shelter India’s China dream after Covid

India quite literally needs to put a roof over its China dream. It took a pandemic and a lockdown to highlight the precarious existence of the country's blue-collar workers. Left without jobs and shelter, an estimated 30 million “” roughly a fifth of the urban labour force “” have gone back to their villages, with many completing long, hazardous journeys on foot when trains and buses shut down. No wonder, then, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government cleared a plan to build inexpensive rental dwellings in cities for 350,000 workers. Giving rural migrants an incentive to return is crucial to restoring economic activity to pre-Covid levels. But there's an opportunity here to do much more. For India to industrialise, rethinking the housing situation will be as important as freeing the urban poor from large medical bills and helping them build retirement savings. If the country of 1.3 billion people wants to be a factory to the world “” the next China “” it must start by giving workers low-cost living quarters. India is sitting on an inventory of more than 1.3 million unsold homes. Mumbai-based property researcher Liases Foras estimates that roughly half of these units could face delays and