NITI Aayog urges reforms to ease worker housing near industrial hubs

To truly unleash the potential of India's manufacturing sector, there is a need to think of dense, large-scale housing for workers as infrastructure

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her July Budget had announced plans to establish rental housing with dormitory-type accommodation for industrial workers in public-private partnership (PPP) mode with viability gap funding (VGF). The success of large-scale manufacturing in India depends critically on the presence of big industrial clusters, and the ability of manufacturers to capitalise on economies of scale and depend on a labour force that exceeds local supply. This induces migration to meet the labour demand and necessitates housing supply to meet subsequent demand. However, the current state of industrial workers’ housing in India is largely managed informally, with