By: Sunil Dahiya, Managing Director, Vigneshwara Developers
If we want to see a regulated real estate business in India, we need to first identify the role of the Government in the system. Apparently UK Government is strategies and transparent since every department there has a master document which shows how to do business with a particular department. Consequently that eliminates the role of middlemen and every other possible conduit. In UK it is well understood that if you are approaching any department then it’s obvious you are going to them to do business with them. So they make sure that they put forward each and every plan in a very conducive manner to avoid any miscommunication and flaws.
However, in India we have a different psychology. We say it is a Democratic nation, whereas we believe we are being governed. For instance in India if the Government is collecting revenue, tax or collecting money from any business entity, it is their business. We would not call it as revenue or a liability. Therefore the government departments also need to understand liabilities. Looking at the present structure how many government departments have been sued by the public and how many judgments have come against the government departments? We still don’t have any answer for this.
In western countries public liability comes on the department first, because they are liable for anything and everything since they are the people owing license. So when a train crash takes place it is the department which is sued. That’s the major difference between Indian governance and the western countries. So there is a strong responsibility to drive your policy. Here, the government comes with policy as per their likes and dislikes, the regime changes and the new government comes with a new policy. Therefore such changes cause the projects to become economically unviable.
Between these policy changes, there should be seamless transformation. Otherwise, lot of public money is lost and becomes redundant. For example, you come up with one expressway and the next regime comes in and designs another one, making the first one economically unviable. Was money not invested in that? Who takes the onus of making that project unviable? In a growing economy, all policy should be seamless and unchangeable.
I saw a news article recently that in New Delhi South Extension, Big Jo’s has been sealed. The government made the master plan and said that this road is commercial, that entity applied for commercial license and the MCD, but the second authority comes in and says you are out of our building plans. So what was the regularization all about? So the first policy has made the second policy redundant and the gap between the two policies, lot of money has been lost and that is public money. Thus, here there’s no seamless transformation because there is no single authority.
Moreover, for real estate and urbanization we need one unified agency which will be responsible for all policies and will see cuts and delays going out. It should be 40 days for one single NOC and that’s it. Resulting in faster projects, faster deliveries, we’ll see customers getting empowered. As mentioned above all the inheritance of the government logjams came on to the private developers and now the private developers are facing the heat of it.
The average life cycle of any housing project has become anywhere from 5-6 years reason being the problems or the gaps are been self created since there is no discussion at the thinktank level. Otherwise, an NOC is an NOC and has to be acquired. But why can’t it be unified from one window?
