As Indian cities struggle to house the poor, is there an alternative to slum rehabilitation schemes?

While the first cooperative housing society in India was started in Bangalore in 1909, Bombay followed rapidly in 1913. So in Bombay (now called Mumbai) we have had over a century of the successful working of cooperative housing societies.

A basic feature of these cooperative societies is that each occupant not only owns the apartment occupied but as a member and shareholder of the society also owns a share of the land on which the building stands.

This share of land ownership is normally in proportion to the size of the apartment occupied. So the apartment and a proportion of the underlying land are both owned by the occupant.

Thus, on sale of the apartment, the occupant realises not only the cost of construction of the apartment but also a share in the appreciation in land value that has taken place over time.

The amount to be paid to the cooperative society at the time of change in ownership is set out in the society’s bye-laws but is necessarily trivial, limited by law to no more than Rs 25,000.

Ownership of both land and building is entirely consistent with a market-oriented society in which land is a commodity, to be treated like any other commodity, fully open to the forces...

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