Introduction

• 1. To address these gaps in the rural housing program and in view of Government’s commitment to providing “Housing for All” by the scheme 2024, the IAY has been re-structured into Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana –Gramin (PMAY-G) w.e.f. 1st April 2016.
• 2. PMAY-G aims at providing a pucca house, with basic amenities, to all houseless householders and those households living in kutcha and dilapidated house, by 2024. The immediate objective is to cover 1.00 crore households living in kutcha house/dilapidated house in three years from 2016-17 to 2018-19. The minimum size of the house has been increased to 25 sq.mt (from 20 sq.mt) with a hygienic cooking space. The unit assistance has been increased from Rs. 70,000 to Rs. 1.20 lakh in plain and from Rs. 75,000 to Rs. 1.30 lakh in hilly states, difficult areas, and IAP district.
• 3. One of the most important features of PMAY-G is the selection of beneficiaries. To ensure that assistance is targeted at those who are genuinely deprived and that the selection is objective and verifiable, PMAY-G instead selects beneficiaries using housing deprivation parameters in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011 data which is verified by the Gram Sabhas. The SECC data captures specific deprivation related to housing among households.
• 4. Towards better quality of construction, setting up of a Nation Technical Support Agency (NTSA) at the national level is envisaged. One of the major constraints in quality house construction is the lack of a sufficient number of skilled masons. To address this, a pan-India training and certification programme of Masons has been launched in the States/UTs. This will, in addition to career progression for rural masons, ensure good quality construction.
• 5. In PMAY-G, programme implementation and monitoring is to be carried out through an end-to-end e-Governance model—using AwaasSoft and Awaas App. AwaasSoft is a work-flow-enabled, web-based electronic service delivery platform through which all critical functions of PMAY-G, right from identification of beneficiaries to providing construction-linked assistance, will be carried out.
• 6. All payments to beneficiaries are to be made through DBT to the beneficiaries’ Bank/Post Office accounts registered in Awaas SoftMIS. The system also provides real-time monitoring of progress through geo-referenced photographs and timestamps.