Launching its multi-pronged strategy to focus attention on the real estate industry’s unending series of problems, CREDAI (Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India) has decided to send an ‘SOS’ to the Prime Minister and planned for a nationwide developers strike to sensitize the policy makers.
Hiranandanis have roped in Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a Queen’s Counsel (QC), as an arbitrator for a Rs 1,400-crore dispute in the family. The other arbitrators are another QC and former Delhi High Court Chief Justice A P Shah. The panel is expected to solve by June the scrap between brother and sister, who are both high-fliers in their own right.
The prices of properties in India will increase by five to six times in the next five years, said Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk SK Devamany today.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday, July 24, announced setting up of an independent environment regulator that would lead to a complete change in the process of granting environment clearances.
Blaming use of black money in real estate to archaic laws, India’s largest realty firm DLF has said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s emphasis on reduction of stamp duty will help in cleansing the sector.
Terming stamp duties as a “big obstacle” in ensuring transparent transactions in real estate, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday batted for reducing such levies to check the flow of black money in the sector.
After the Convention of confederation of real estate developers’ association of India (CREDAI) where the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee urged the realty sector to be poor sensitive, it seems the affordable housing is the buzz word now. National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO), the apex body for real estate and housing sectors under the aegis of Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, also announced that its convention is aimed at realizing the “Housing for All” call of Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh.
The question is what needs to be done. Or in other words, how could real estate consume more out of ‘Make in India’ manufacturing? The question in itself is flawed, if not in sync with the larger eco system issues. Setting up and making a manufacturing unit in India comes with its own challenges. Cheap labour alone would not give India any edge or cost arbitrage over the export items. ‘Make in India’ has to move beyond the rhetoric of nationalism and reforms have to be introduced at each and every level, ranging from lower corporate tax to labour laws and making the country a happy hunting ground for the manufacturers of the world.
It was expected to be a future ready budget and the overtones in the power corridors were also self-congratulatory in advance. It finally turned out to be pretty ordinary budget for the real estate sector. The stakeholders are nevertheless looking for the silver lining here and there. The most critical stakeholder, the home buyer, is pretty disappointed with the Union Budget 2021-22.
It is in this backdrop that in a typical “Ravi Sinha Uncensored” tone I told a PR girl who called me for one such Press Release by one of the largest developers of Mumbai, “Listen! As a matter of principle I am not carrying any story on food distribution to construction workers. But wait! Please give my feedback to your client, “He or any other builder is not doing any charity; not worth beating its own trumpet. This is a national calamity and you are morally bound to do so. Such Press Releases only make you look really petty. You can weave this info into some other story once the dust settles and everything is normal. But glorifying humanitarian gesture at this point of time is at best Corona Tourism for Publicity which is highly deplorable.”