Housing

Launched in 2015, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana set out to give every eligible poor family a pucca (permanent) house. It runs in two parts — Urban (PMAY-U) and Gramin (PMAY-G) — and by 2025 had completed close to 4 crore houses: about 2.77 crore rural and over 92 lakh urban, one of the largest housing programmes in the world.

The programme was designed to converge with other schemes, so a PMAY house typically comes with a toilet (Swachh Bharat), an electricity connection (Saubhagya), an LPG connection (Ujjwala) and tap water (Jal Jeevan). A large majority of houses are owned or co-owned by women, and about 60% of rural houses went to SC/ST families — making it a tool for social equity as well as shelter.

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) delivers housing in two streams: PMAY-Gramin builds pukka (permanent) houses for the rural poor, and PMAY-Urban helps city families through subsidies, including an interest subsidy on home loans. Beneficiaries are chosen from deprivation data, money is released in tranches as construction progresses (tracked with geo-tagged photos), and houses are usually built by the family itself with government support.

PMAY has already delivered well over 4 crore houses, one of the largest housing drives anywhere. The scheme has been extended as PMAY 2.0 (2024) to build about 3 crore more homes. The ongoing tasks are quality and reach — better construction and basic services (water, toilets, power) in the new homes, and covering families still left out, especially in fast-growing cities where affordable housing is scarcest.

The ongoing tasks are quality and reach — keeping construction standards high, making sure homes have reliable services, and extending affordable housing to those still waiting in fast-growing cities.

~4 crore PMAY houses completed (2015→2025). 2.77 crore rural + 92 lakh urban. Most owned/co-owned by women; ~60% of rural to SC/ST. Sources: MoHUA, Ministry of Rural Development.