Housing paradoxes in India: is there a solution?

If providing a decent shelter is an immediate concern for developing countr ies, the reduction of global emissions such as carbon dioxide is a cause of concern for industrialized countries. A short focused policy prescription for a country like India would be to provide a decent shelter for its more than 15% citizens, who do not have adequate housing. However, a sustainable path would be to develop a well strategized path to meet current needs of housing and also to reduce absolute contribution to global emissions throug h those construction techniques which are environment friendly. We develop an optimization framework to analyse a sustainable path to meet housing sho rtages in India, considering that the sustainable path should not be at the cost of engineering design criteria. The criteria to measure sustainabilit y in this paper is cost effectiveness, efficient utilization of resources a nd environment friendliness. A computer model called 'MHOPE' has been devel oped to estimate resources and construction techniques required to achieve housing for all in India. The technologies incorporated in the model are su itable for India, however, the model can be upgraded to include the house c onstruction technologies suitable for any other country of interest. The re sults indicate that it is not possible to provide housing for all in India with the present set of construction techniques which are predominantly cem ent and brick based. However, if low cost housing techniques, which use loc ally available materials, are used, we can achieve this target of 'Shelter for all'. It will not only reduce cost, but also reduce CO2 emissions becau se locally available materials are less energy intensive. The paper quantif ies the level of investment, resources and employment required to provide s helter for all. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.