Builders organise conference at Dubai Atlantis on Affordable Housing, but there's no consensus on what it means
Builders organise conference at Dubai Atlantis on Affordable Housing, but there's no consensus on what it means
Over 1,000 builders from all over India have spent around Rs 10 crore to organise a three-day conference on Affordable Housing at one of the world's most expensive hotels, Atlantis The Palm, in Dubai.
But the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI), which has organised the event, has no definition of Affordable Housing.
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Despite this, the first Affordable Housing project was launched by Tanaji Malasure City (TMC) builders in Karjat in 2008 and several CREDAI builders have regularly espoused the cause.
Meanwhile, a few calculations show that nearly 335 families can be housed in the amount spent on the conference. We arrived at this number taking into account that an affordable house in Karjat costs Rs 3 lakh.
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Atlantis The Palm in Dubai where the builders of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India have organised a conference on Affordable Housing. The association's conference in Macaulast year |
A Mumbai-based builder who will attend the January 23-25 conference has paid nearly Rs 50,000 as delegate fee.
He'll spend over Rs 40,000 for business class air tickets. So, each of the 1,000 builder members of CREDAI will spend around Rs 1 lakh just to attend the conference.
Most of them will also stay at the Atlantis, where the cheapest room costs over Rs 23,000 a night and the costliest nearly Rs 19 lakh per night.
And ironically, the programme schedule of the event reads, "Urban India has a vibrant housing market, which is well illustrated by the 30 per cent growth in housing finance over the past decade.
Yet, a majority of Indians are struggling to own a house.
80 per cent of the households in India earn less than Rs 12,000 a month and a good 14 per cent even less.
This means that they do not even qualify for loans. In such a situation, does Affordable Housing come in as a relief to many Indians?"
Said a market insider, "It's strange that in one breath they talk about an affordable house and then spend crores of rupees on a conference that could have been held in Mumbai or within the country for a few lakhs."
Did you Know?
Last year CREDAI's conference on recession was held in Macau. Over 800 builders attended the event that was held at The Venetian, another famous and grossly expensive hotel.
25,000The approximate number of homeless families in Mumbai
75 lakh
The number of people who live in slums in Mumbai one-and-a-half times the population of Finland
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Rajni Ajmera, former CREDAI president and a member of its advisory committee said, "We have been organising our conferences outdoors for a long time.
This time we chose Dubai because there's plenty of construction work going on there that builders can have a look at.
There are people who want to criticise our work we do, regardless of what we do. We cannot stop our work for them." |
