At the fag end of his career Dr M L Khurana, Managing Director, NCHF has a dream. A dream to revolutionize the urban slums by ushering in what he terms as slum cooperative. Our major cities be it Delhi or Mumbai are nothing but extension of slums with pockets of posh areas thrown in here and there.
Khurana is not only talking but has also begun a pilot project in Faridabad, adjacent to South Delhi. Incident like Lalita park collapse of building killing 71 persons will not happen if we focus on housing cooperative and especially slum cooperative, claims Dr Khurana.
His idea of slum cooperative revolves around housing, credit-thrift and retail business in slums. Banks do not give loan to slum dwellers and private lenders charge at the rate of 30 percent or more. Great sea of humanity will benefit from slum cooperative if we succeed in implementing it, said Dr Khurana.
Lamenting over the fact that National Cooperative Housing Federation is not able to get land these days he says that we can not compete with private builders who adopt hundred short cuts to achieve their target.
Lauding role of cooperative housing Khurana says that we have less incidence of violence, better security system and some kind of emotional bonding in cooperative housing societies. NCHF conducts regular training for the office bearers of housing societies, MD said.
But what if the office bearers of housing cooperative society develops vested interest? The MD said that to keep close watch we are encouraging states to bring about legislation whereby instead of General Body meeting 3 times in a year it meets four times. Many states have followed this including Delhi, notes a satisfied Khurana.
Author of several books and an accomplished scholar on cooperative subject, Dr M L Khurana intends to take housing federations to many states including Sikkim, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh.
NCHF has 92 thousand housing cooperatives as its members which translate to 65 lakhs individuals. It claims to have built 2.5 million houses mostly to low income group. It has also loaned about Rs 11000 crores.
Paucity of land has driven Dr Khurana to write letter to the chief Ministers of states requesting them to reserve 33 percent of land for NCHF. To a question as to what response he expects, Dr Khuran only gives a wry smile.