THE fact that lakhs of homes at various stages of construction have been stalled across major cities in the country actually indicates a stage of inevitable decline of the realty sector in India in the past some years. Even as investigators unearth the irregularities that dogged the famed Amrapali Group engaged in massive urban housing projects, the realty sector is confronted by harsh realities of undesirable adjustments that its managers indulged in to squeeze the system to extract silent benefits but keep those under wraps. A study has found that absolutely no construction activity is going on at hundreds of such housing projects involving billions of rupees. Lakhs of home-buyers feel cheated as they have not been able to get their dream-nests even after paying a lot of money for each unit. In sum and substance, the country’s reality sector now faces a tremendous trust deficit whose origin can be traced in the irregular practices and uncouth financial machinations indulged in by the captains of realty sector. The complete picture, thus, is one of a big chaos whose solution may not be easily available to the country in the next some time.

 

Seen from close enough distance, the Indian realty sector presents a picture with a lot of bleak elements in the past two decades or so. Then, it was considered a boom time especially for urban housing segment. Countless thousands of projects came up across the land involving billions of rupees gleaned from lakhs of prospective home-buyers. Each of those transactions was riddled by black-money components that defied any logic and sense of sanity. The insane greed that underlined the captains of the realty sector robbed lakhs of prospective home-buyers of crores of rupees cumulatively, in the process filling the pockets of the members of what came to be known as builders’ lobby as well as uncouth political elements.

 

This unholy nexus robbed the country of a genuine boom time in realty sector, and also deprived aspiring home-buyers of the houses of their dreams. For, lakhs of houses have been stalled at various stages of construction for a long time all over the country, particularly in the top and middle layers of the urban pyramid. In other words, the realty sector also has some dimensions similar to those of civil aviation or higher education sectors where bad policies, unholy nexus between political and business elements that colluded to mislead lakhs of unsuspecting people into making investments that ultimately did not yield the desired results.

 

The worst part of the realty sector was the black-money component that the prospective buyers were expected to shell out, naturally unofficially, by converting even white money into concealed income to save themselves from the tax nets. Thus, there was a whole range of unofficial activity that filled the pockets of sector leaders but robbed common people of their legitimate financial resources. This is, no doubt, a dirty picture that took the country nowhere. This is one area that the country would like to forget immediately but will not be able to shake off its back for a long time. For, the mess is so complicated that the country’s economy will have to keep suffering from pangs of mismanagement and shameless corruption for decades on end.

 

Any corrective steps, thus, will require a lot of patience, a good deal of planning to extricate the reality sector from the current mess, and a lot of ethical conduct that may see many heads roll in the short and long runs. Like many other areas, the realty sector, too, represents a section of the ugly underbelly of the national economy needing a massive correction no matter at whose cost. The country deserves a more morally upright handling of the realty sector that deals with a delicate sentiment common people weave around their dream-homes.