Housing for All in Viksit Bharat: Land as the First Bottleneck

Housing for All in Viksit Bharat: Land as the First Bottleneck

1. Introduction

India has set itself the goal of becoming a developed nation, or Viksit Bharat, by 2047, and a home for every family is part of that goal. Delhi's planning now follows the same timeline: its new Master Plan, approved in August 2026, is described as aligned with the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.[note] At the national level, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban aims to help one crore more urban families get a home.[note]

Yet Delhi is still far from this goal. The shortage hurts poorer families most. Many live in unauthorised colonies, slum clusters (known as JJ clusters) or rented rooms with no security. Most government effort so far has gone into the building stage, through subsidies and extra building space for affordable flats.

This paper argues that the real problem starts earlier. Before an affordable home can be built, someone needs land that is legally available, allowed to be used for housing, and connected to roads, water and sewers. In Delhi, each of these steps is handled by a different body, under a different law, with its own delays and fees. Land is therefore the first bottleneck, and the costs it creates end up in the price of the home.

2. The Legal Framework

2.1 What the Constitution says

The Constitution does not directly promise every Indian a house, but it sets out the duties for the government. Its Directive Principles are goals the government must keep in mind when making laws, even though a court cannot force it to meet them. Article 38 guides the government to reduce inequality, and Article 39(b) asks it to share the community’s ‘material resources’, such as land, in a way that serves the common good.[note]

However, the Supreme Court has recently narrowed how far this second duty goes. In 2024, a nine-judge bench held that not all privately owned property counts as a ‘material resource of the community’.[note] The State must prove that the private resource/property has a “community element” by assessing:

Nature & scarcity of the resource.

Public impact of the resource on the community.

The consequences of its concentration in the hands of private owners.

In simple terms, this duty now applies most clearly to land the government already owns. In Delhi, that means the large land holdings of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

The courts have also treated shelter as part of the right to life under Article 21. In the case of Olga Tellis V. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), the Supreme Court expanded the scope of Article 21 (Right to Life) to include the Right to Livelihood as an implied fundamental right.[note] So, it also affects the Constitutional Rights when housing becomes unaffordable or economically inaccessible.

2.2 Who controls land in Delhi

The part discusses about who decides how the land is used. The main law is the Delhi Development Act 1957, which created the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) as Delhi's planning body.[note] The DDA prepares the Master Plan. Master Plan is a legally binding document that decides the use of every piece of land. No one may use land against the Master Plan.[note]

Under Article 239AA of the Constitution, the Delhi Government cannot make laws regarding land.[note] Land is controlled mainly by the Union Government (the Central Government of India), through MoHUA and the DDA. At the same time, the Delhi Government keeps land records and acquires land,[note] and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) approves building plans and collects fees.[note]

This split also goes against the spirit of the 74th Constitutional Amendment of 1992, which was meant to give city governments control over local planning. Article 243W allows, but does not require, such powers to be handed to municipal bodies.[note]

3. Changing the Use of Land

Much of Delhi's remaining open land is designated as agricultural land in the Master Plan and not for housing. Before the land can be used for providing housing, its permitted use must be changed.

The process is set out in section 11A of the Delhi Development Act. The DDA proposes the change, the public is given time to object (45 days in the case of the Master Plan draft), objections are heard, and the change is finally approved by MoHUA and published in the official Gazette.[note] Each step has a fair purpose, but the law sets no overall time limit.

Time is not the only cost here. Changing land use also brings fees, known as conversion charges.[note]

4. Cost and budgeting

Money for affordable housing in Delhi comes from three main sources, and each has limits.

The first is the DDA itself. The DDA mainly funds itself by selling land, flats and shops. For 2026-27 it approved a budget of ₹14,962 crore and reported a surplus for the third year in a row, driven largely by flat sales.[note]

The second source is the Union Government, through Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). The scheme offers up to ₹2.5 lakh per home and a subsidy on home loans for lower-income buyers.[note] But the grant is the same whether the land under the home is cheap or expensive. In housing, where acquiring land is the biggest cost, a fixed grant covers only a small part of the real price.

The third source is the Delhi Government, mainly through the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), which builds flats for slum residents. In 2020 it planned 89,400 such flats at about ₹8 lakh each, but the plan was limited by the land DUSIB held.[note]

The weaknesses of this system are clearest where money has been spent but homes have not reached people. Over 50,000 flats built for Delhi's poor under an earlier central scheme were reported in 2025 to have no takers, partly because of poor infrastructure.[note] Many were built on cheap land far from jobs and transport. This somewhere depicts the other side of the land problem: pushing affordable housing onto the cheapest land can leave homes where people cannot or will not live.

5. Reducing Land Costs

The Land Costing Wing under DDA is the one that makes affordable housing a reality in Delhi. Under normal circumstances, the hyper-inflated commercial market value of land in Delhi would make it impossible to build cheap housing. To overcome this high cost, this specialized department uses its financial and policy powers to systematically strip away land acquisition costs from the final price sheets of housing units meant for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low-Income Groups (LIG).[note]

The wing achieves this primarily through a financial strategy known as cross-subsidization. It intentionally sets very high baseline reserve prices for luxury residential properties (HIG flats), prime commercial plots, and industrial land leases.[note] When these premium assets are sold via competitive e-auctions, they generate massive profit surpluses. [note] The Land Costing Wing captures these profits and funnels them directly into low-income housing budgets, using corporate and high-end wealth to absorb the construction deficits of affordable developments.[note]

Conclusion

This paper asked how land rules in Delhi affect the cost and speed of affordable housing. The answer is that housing must pass through long, open-ended steps spread across many bodies, and each step turns time into cost before building even begins. The Master Plan took about five years to become law. Land-use changes have no time limit and uncertain fees. Land pooling has brought only one sector to development in eight years. Money alone cannot fix this, because the DDA earns by selling land, central grants do not reflect Delhi's land prices, and past spending on distant sites has left thousands of flats empty.

In this way, the current system falls short of the Constitution's promise of shelter and fair use of public land. If Housing for All is to be achieved in Viksit Bharat by 2047, change in Delhi must begin not with construction, but with land. The challenges identified here in this paper give policymakers a clear place to start.