In a bid to accelerate PMAY-U's target of providing ‘housing for all', the ministry will invite ideas for innovative technologies for mass housing projects that can help build houses faster, cheaper, and of better quality, with sustainable green materials.

At a time when construction of houses under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) is moving at a pace far slower than its rural counterpart, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is set to have a global technology challenge to provide more dynamism to the scheme.

In a bid to accelerate PMAY-U’s target of providing ‘housing for all’, the ministry will invite ideas for innovative technologies for mass housing projects that can help build houses faster, cheaper, and of better quality, with sustainable green materials.

The ministry is set to launch the Global Housing Construction Technology Challenge as part of the technology sub-mission of PMAY-U.

According to officials, the challenge will invite ideas from across the globe for alternative technologies that go beyond the brick-and-mortar building model used widely in Indian construction. The winning technologies would be used to build mass houses, in a tie-up with the states, for the economically weaker sections and low-income groups under the affordable housing project vertical of PMAY-U.

Such houses will be constructed in varying geo-climatic zones across the country.

Around 8 lakh houses have been constructed under PMAY-U since its launch in June 25, 2015, which does not even account for 10 per cent of the revised ministry target of providing 1.2 crore houses by 2022.

As against this, under the rural component PMAY-Gramin, 48.26 lakh houses have been built, with the pace almost on course of meeting the target of 2.95 crore houses by 2022.

A Urban Affairs Ministry official said that technologies would have to be tried and tested to be found suitable to the geographical conditions of the areas selected. According to the official, the four parameters in the global challenge would be time, cost, quality, and sustainability.

“The technology will have to be better than the existing ones on all these four fronts. We have already spoken to states about it and have decided that six geographically different urban areas would be chosen across the country with varying terrains such as say hilly, plain, or earthquake-prone,” the official said.

“The winning technologies would then be used to build 1,000 houses, multi-storey or otherwise, depending on the area type, in each of these places,” the official said. “The technology should be such that it is scalable so that it can be used to construct cheaper and faster mass housing in similar areas.”

The ministry is likely to send a proposal to this effect to the cabinet for its approval by next month. The winning technologies, selected based on criteria laid down by a technical committee of the ministry, will be used to construct houses within the next six to seven months, as against the one-year period required to finish such a project.

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