A roof for the homeless

The Left Democratic Front government in Kerala has expanded the scope of Article 21 of our Constitution — the right to life with dignity — when it completed the first phase of LIFE (Livelihood Inclusion and Financial Empowerment) Mission on Saturday constructing 2,14,262 houses for people living below the poverty line. Each eligible family was sanctioned Rs 4 lakhs to complete the project and the total expenditure was about Rs 6,000-odd crores. The state government tapped every resource to complete the houses - as many as 65,092 houses were built using funds from the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana — Rs 1.5 lakhs each for 48,445 urban homes and Rs 72,000 each for 16,647 rural homes. Local self-governments bore half the total estimated cost for each house. The beneficiaries were fully spared the financial burden.

There are a lot of takeaways from such an impressive project. One is the extra mile the government walked to help complete those 50,000-odd partly-constructed houses. They had their foundations done; some even had walls but the residents had no financial means to complete them and had given up hopes on them. With a small but significant help, the government fulfilled their dreams of living in a fully done home. The other was the thought went into the planning. The 420-sq ft houses do not look similar; they are not built in colonies; they bear no government stamp. They look like any other Kerala home. The families get them as their right and not as an offering of the state. This is not a common feature of a government-aided programme anywhere in the country, even in Kerala.

As per LIFE Mission data, there are 4.32 lakh homeless families in the state, of which 1.58 are landless homeless. The first phase was aimed at them. In the next phase, the government is planning to cover the entire homeless population. It's an endeavour every state can think of emulating.