There can be no denying that a liminal existence as residents/house-owners unauthorised colony can be prevented for millions if land regulation is responsive in true-time rather of attempting to include harm decades following.
The Delhi High Court (HC) has ordered the Delhi Jal Board to provide water to the Delhi Sainik Cooperative Housing Building Society, an unauthorised colony in the national capital on the grounds that suitable to access to drinking water is basic to life and that it was a duty of the state to provide this. There are various judgments that enshrine a comparable view some professionals interpret the Supreme Court’s (SC) judgment in MC Mehta vs Kamal Nath to hold that the state not only should regulate water provide but also assure that citizens’ suitable to “healthy water” is realised. In Narmada Bachao Andolan vs Union of India, the SC maintained that ‘water is … part of the right to life’. From a governance point of view, also, providing access to secure water is in the interest of the state provided the public wellness ramifications of restricted access.
That mentioned, the HC order also creates a moral hazard it sets a precedent for post facto regularisation of unauthorised colonies by having the government, by means of the court procedure, to provide utilities on a par with authorized colonies. This is not to argue that the government should abdicate its duty to the residents of unauthorised colonies, but to highlight the want to act more rapidly on the complicated dilemma of increasing urbanisation, consequent demand for cost-effective housing and the mushrooming of unauthorised colonies versus rigid zoning and land-use conversion regulations.
The most telling indicator of how the government—both the Centre and that of the national capital territory—has underestimated urbanisation and the want for cost-effective housing in Delhi is the truth that practically a third of the capital’s residents live in unauthorised colonies. The challenges these unauthorised colonies face, from lack of roads and other public performs to absent sewer connectivity and public wellness, imply diminished citizenship for some sections of the capital’s population, such as lakhs of low-earnings households.
The colonies have come up in violation of the zoning regulations, either by means of breach of the provisions of the Delhi Master Plan or on illegally subdivided agricultural land even though there have been a number of regularisation attempts—after Parliament passed a Bill in December 2019, 1,731 unauthorised colonies in the national capital have been place on the path to regularisation.
The use of satellite imagery and geographical data systems for geo-tagging land can probably speed up the procedure of regularising colonies, but a more tough resolution calls for easing up processes such as land-use conversion, granting clear title, and so on. There can be no denying that a liminal existence as residents/house-owners unauthorised colony can be prevented for millions if land regulation is responsive in true-time rather of attempting to include harm decades following.