IIM Ahmedabad meet focuses on city’s disparate growth

"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," — the famous lines by Rudyard Kipling were used to illustrate the rather uneven development in the eastern and western part of Ahmedabad.

The analogy took place on the second day of the international conference on 'Challenges to Inclusive Growth in the Emerging Economies', at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) on Thursday.

Former IIMA prof VL Mote chaired a session and he also has been working for inclusive growth.

He pointed out, "Those of you who are familiar with Ahmedabad must have noticed the stark contrast between west Ahmedabad and east Ahmedabad.
When we cross the bridge near the Income Tax building and move towards Delhi gate, we move from west Ahmedabad to east. While the west is prosperous, east Ahmedabad is extremely poor," he pointed out.

He stressed that inclusive growth does not mean not doing business with the bottom of the pyramid but promising high and rising standards of living to the poorest of the poor. 

One of the presentations made by the MD of Sintex Industries Limited, SB
Dangayach,  on Public Policy Reforms for Providing Food, Shelter and Education, discussed how affordable housing has been given the lowest priority by the central as well as the state government, and what has been talked about is not reflected in the policy formed for affordable or EWS housing.

While talking about deficiencies in shelter and housing sector, Dangayach spoke about the throttling of supply of land for housing, irrational control in respect of land availability and use and impractical rent laws to discourage investment in housing, apart from encouragement to investors to use land and housing as a sink for development of ill gotten wealth etc.

He said that reforms were needed in the laws to enhance land availability for housing or EWS, low income group or poor.

"Disallow farm houses in the city. They are neither farms nor houses. Either keep the land for farming or four housing," he said and insisted that we must facilitate increase in availability of formal housing of different types for sale or rent.