In case you’ve been reading the papers regularly there was a news item that made it to the front page a week ago highlighting the disproportionately high number of applications received for the recent DDA housing scheme. The newspapers used it as an excuse to lament the lack of affordable housing for the Aam Aadmi (as usual) and to paint the existing Government in a bad light (again as usual).
Since I am notoriously apolitical and frankly couldn’t care less about the Government, I am not going to use precious blog space in singing paeans about the ruling party, I’d just like to highlight the fact that if a study were to be conducted into the nature of the applications you would find the following break up:-
Most of the subscriptions would be in the name of people who already have at least one home and they are either going to sell off the allotment or they are going to rent out the property. In either case they couldn’t be bothered to live in that house any way.
The next majority would be people like brokers etcetera who would sell the allotment at a premium and are probably just deciding which allotments to pick because they are already hand in glove with the DDA officials.
The ones who would be in minority are the ones whom the paper highlights. The Aam Aadmi. These guys would be in such a small minority that if only their applications were to be considered then probably there would be no story for the press. Or the press would have to cook up a story about faulty construction to explain the phenomenon of left over flats.
The bottom line is that sheer greed has inflated the number of applications, not the lack of affordable housing. Ultimately, someone is going to buy the allotments in the open market and that is when the real Aam Aadmi will come to light. Until then, it’s the overbearing and rude Dilliwalla who’s going to rule the roost and the papers can be smug and self satisfied that once again they have been able to bring to public knowledge the apathy of the Government.
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