By: Harmit Chawla, Managing Director, HCorp Realty
Track2Realty: The social responsibility part of the Indian developers has been lacking, to say the least. The manner in which the developers have operated in many emerging micro markets leaves much to be desired of their sensitivities to these issues considering the unprofessional and opaque approach to the functioning of the developers where local level leaders are made a party by greasing their palms.
With so much of complexity involved at social federal level and economic level, any single solution like single-window-clearance sounds a far cry and would be seen by many as arbitrary. It is not that delay in approvals is not one of the main reasons of project’s life cycle & cost appreciation. It, of course, does and the buyers are the worst affected lot.
So, any solution needs a lot of coordination with a single focus and desire to come together and then forming a body at the centre to look after the proposals with the representatives of concerned state along with both local district and panchayat level representatives including central representatives. This will ensure that collective and timely decisions are taken.
Problem is that when as an industry body your wish list starts with what is not feasible, then you end up not getting even what could have been achieved over a couple of meetings.
We have seen it in recent past how the Union Urban Development Minister has been pushed to the verbal corner when as a guest he attended industry body function, and the minister in retaliation ridiculed the sector for its overt greed. My point is whether this is the right approach for sector’s policy advocacy. Definitely not, at least I don’t agree.
Let us not draw an ideal picture of what policy advocacy certain other industries have so very successfully adopted. They are industry in the first place, and then they have been through trial and error process over a period of time. In realty, it is “trial of error” process at the moment and not “trial & error” to make amends and move forward.
What the sector should look for reforms is a step by step process instead of an elevation through media trial against the government. The demand should rather be to introduce clear and binding bylaws. This itself would be a major step to ensure swift clearances.
I am quite confident that such measures would prevent default on the delivery front by developers as delays often make projects unviable. Secondly, the sector should crave for automatic change of land use for converting agriculture land for residential & commercial if the said area was within a city’s pre-defined master plan.
