There is an unmet demand for rural housing from the above poverty line (APL) families as government programmes mostly focus on housing for those below the poverty line (BPL).
One way of meeting this demand is to provide financing through the preferential lending route. “Banks are supposed to provide 1 per cent under this head, or Rs 30,000 crore, but they do not even manage 0.1 per cent,” State Bank of India Chairman OP Bhatt said at a panel discussion on rural housing.
This lending — at a rate of 4 per cent — is possible if the pool of those eligible to avail of this lending is expanded, suggested Bhatt. According to a report on rural housing by the National Council of Applied Economic Research, there is a significant latent demand for housing from the rural rich.
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