The Seventh Schedule of Indian Constitution has allocated the matters pertaining to housing and urban development to the State; and further with The Constitution 74th Amendment Act, 1993 these have been delegated further to the Local Bodies. As such the Constitutional and legal authority of the ministry is limited to the National Capital Territory of Delhi and other Union Territories. The authority of the ministry stems from the fact that it is the Government of India that allocates resources to the State Governments through various centrally sponsored schemes, provides finances through national financial institutions and supports various external assistance programmes for housing and urban development in the country as a whole.
The ministry, as of May 2008, is headed by a Minister of State (Independent Charge) Kumari Selja.
The Ministry was attached on and off with the Ministry of Urban Development on many occasions, before finally becoming independent in 2004.[1]
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The ministry has administrative control over the following:
The Government of India has launched various programs since Independence to alleviate poverty and address the widening income gap, both, amongst the upper and lower classes of society, and amongst the rural and urban parts of the country. As trends in the Gini coefficient reflect[2], the income gaps were not as pronounced until the early 1980’s, but the situation has been continually getting worse since. Misplaced priorities of the Indian Government and bad planning of subsidy programs is largely responsible for this. Hosting the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010 that cost the exchequer an approximate $2.5 Billion excluding the price of non-sports related infrastructure is a case in point.[3] That money could have been used better in helping alleviate the astounding number of farmer suicides over the last decade.[4] While newly launched programs like NREGA, NRHM, Food Security Act, Mid-day Meals and Bharat Nirman Yojana have demonstrated success in the initial stages, their performance over the long-run still remains to be seen. The shortsightedness of the Indian government often leads it to launch populist programs that may not necessarily work well. Low-hanging fruits like increasing the minimum wages of the country can go a long way in achieving the goal of poverty alleviation, but are yet to be taken up in spite of reminders from leading economists.[5]