Housing the Urban Poor in India under PMAY-U for Safe and Resilient Cities and Communities
India has a 12 million unit housing shortage, and PMAY-U race to close it. The lecture questions if "shelter-first" suffices or if housing needs tenure security, transit access, and social infrastructure. This changes how we build at scale.
Organizer: Dr Manoj Kumar Teotia, Associate Professor and Chairperson, Deptt of Sociology and Social Work, CBLU, Bhiwani, Haryana, India
May 20, 2026 | 14:45 - 15:10
(passed)
Summary
India's rapid urbanization—projected to bring 600 million people into cities by 2031—has created a housing shortage of approximately 12 million units, most acute among the Economically Weaker Sections and Low Income Groups. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban (PMAY-U), the largest affordable housing program in the country's history, has emerged as the primary national response—but this lecture asks whether shelter provision alone is sufficient to produce safe, resilient, and inclusive urban communities. Drawing on sociological field research from Haryana, it examines whether PMAY-U beneficiaries also receive the tenure security, public transit access, and social infrastructure necessary to make housing genuinely livable and economically enabling. The findings carry implications not just for India but for every government attempting to address large-scale urban housing deficits through supply-side programs.