As India turns into the world’s most populated country with 1.4 billion folks, housing, significantly for low-income city households, stays a longstanding problem.

According to a report by India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, there was a housing hole of about 19 million items all through Indian cities in 2012. The research, achieved in gentle of the 2011 census, added that housing for low-income teams accounted for greater than 95 % of the deficit.

India’s 2021 census was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic and is but to be introduced.

Another research by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) in 2020 discovered that India’s city housing scarcity rose 54 % to 29 million in 2018 from 18.78 million in 2012. It included households that have been homeless, households that lived in insufficient homes that would not be upgraded, homes that have been out of date and those who lived in congested circumstances.

According to the Delhi authorities’s Economic Survey for 2020-2021, 6.75 million folks lived in poor housing in low-income settlements solely in New Delhi, India’s capital, which included 695 slum settlements, 1,797 unauthorised colonies and 362 city villages.

An further 2.4 million new housing items have been required to fulfill New Delhi’s housing deficit, it stated.

“I have lived in Delhi for 40 years, worked hard my entire life, but I could never afford a better house for myself,” Shah Alam, an autorickshaw driver who lives in a single room together with his household in a slum within the metropolis’s Ghazipur space, instructed Al Jazeera.

Experts say the sluggish pace of constructing reasonably priced housing, diminished land and area entitlements, accelerated housing manufacturing for the privileged courses, and large-scale demolitions and evictions have contributed to the city housing disaster in India.

India’s authorities has carried out quite a lot of housing insurance policies and tasks in response to the perennial problem, primarily amongst low and middle-income teams.

The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) says it’s attempting to enhance housing high quality and supply shelter to the homeless within the metropolis of practically 20 million residents.

“The board is implementing the approved plan schemes to improve the quality of housing in Delhi,” the board’s CEO Garima Gupta instructed Al Jazeera.

But activists say the homes constructed below such tasks are inadequate in quantity, typically unaffordable, or unviable for these most in want.

“Given the high cost of land and construction materials, building low-cost houses for low-income people is not economically viable. The low-income class cannot afford the house unless the charges are subsidised,” Abdul Shakeel, city practitioner and member of a civil society group on housing in New Delhi, instructed Al Jazeera.