Harishankar reports from Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh. He is a full-time social activist, primarily reporting on land rights, food security and education. He also reports on Dalit rights and police torture, and believes that mobilising the community is crucial to resolving any issue; and believes in working for community media as opposed to mainstream media because the latter, he feels, does…

Harishankar Gupta

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India is a welfare economy and the Government has many beneficial schemes for people living below the poverty line. One such scheme is ‘Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana’ (PMAY) - it is the Government's commitment to provide housing assistance, starting from 1st April 2016. This scheme provides assistance to build own residences with basic amenities to people without houses or the people who live in shanties. The aim of this scheme is to provide concrete houses to all the beneficiaries by 2022.

It is a mammoth task to implement such a grand scheme in a populous country such as India. One of the crucial factors in this scheme is to identify the beneficiaries and verify their eligibility. For this scheme, the Gram Sabhas (Village Councils) select the beneficiaries with the help from Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2021, and their own discernment.

This is a tricky situation and we can see that in few cases, nepotism and favoritism is practiced to choose the beneficiaries. The Community Correspondent (CC) Harishankar found that in Sarvahanpur village of Biswan Block, Sitapur district, Uttar Pradesh, around 80 families are not getting the benefits of PMAY Rural. He is now helping them with applications and connecting them with officials for their housing assistance. 

He is requesting us to see and share this video so that the concerned officials can review this matter and the beneficiaries receive their housing assistance soon.