‘Benami’ societies getting registered in fictitious names and then trading in land and multistory flats is a malaise that needs to be nipped in the bud. The results of the inappropriate Rent Control Acts, Cooperative Housing Acts, Apartment Ownership Acts and Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act, have unleashed the evil forces of capitalism like never before.
The extent to which these have widened the schism between the rich and the poor is unimaginable. State financial supports for cooperatives have therefore been very minimal. A simple and liberal State aid policy does not bring up the development to an appreciable level. Development cannot take place unless cooperatives base themselves on solid foundations of local self-reliance and self-help.
By simply offering a few financial and other concessions, the government has made the cooperatives ‘facility minded’ rather than ‘development minded’ . . . in a majority of the cases, it has been found that cooperatives are organized to avail a few facilities from the government . . . . The highly limited success of the cooperative housing movement in India has thus been an outcome of the state inability to translate its thoughts into actions. Absence of community involvement in cooperative housing has been the obvious outcome as well as the cause for further limiting its success. This argument could be justified by taking a look at the Urban Community Development (UCD) projects implemented in the late 60’s.
When considering the present developments in state as a whole, is witnessing the march of the market forces. The market forces control practically each and every real estate development in every nook and corner of the state. Thus the major developments have now caught the attention of the investors and other people from other destinations.