Available land per capita in India is expected to decline fourfold by 2050 relative to 1960. Land scarcity would be far more acute in urban India, resulting in high land prices and growth of urban slums. A key question that needs to be addressed is whether increasing land prices largely reflect the supply and demand imbalances or whether land regulation, urban governance, and the speculative demand for land are pushing up land prices. Also, land issues have assumed tremendous significance in the context of ease of doing business. An assessment of alternative approaches to achieving efficient use of land would be imperative as urban growth intensifies.
The present volume comprising 10 papers is organised under three major heads—Institutional and Regulatory Factors Influencing Supply of Land, Patterns of Urban Housing and Land Prices, and New Initiatives in Urban Development. The book is motivated by a round table on issues focusing on land and urbanisation organised earlier by NCAER. It is hoped that this volume would be of immense relevance to scholars, urban planners, business planners and policymakers working in the area of urban land.
Shashanka Bhide is currently Director, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He was earlier Senior Research Counsellor at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. He was also Professor and RBI Chair at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore in 2003-04. He has published widely in academic and professional forums. His research interests have included issues relating to agriculture, infrastructure and macroeconomic modelling. While at NCAER, he led a major study on land pooling and development models for Delhi.
Devendra B. Gupta is currently a Senior Consultant at NCAER, New Delhi. He was associated with the Institute of Economic Growth (Professor of Economics and Director, Population Research Centre); Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi (S.P. Jain Chair), National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (HDFC Chair); Planning Commission (Advisor–Urban Development). He has been consultant with the World Bank, UNICEF, ESCAP, ILO-ARTEP, DFID, WHO. He has held visiting positions at Yale, Hull University (England), and Hitotsubashi (Japan). His primary areas of interest include: econometric modelling, health and housing, water and sanitation, urban and land economics, small industry and development economics. He holds MA both in Economics and Economic Statistics from Delhi School of Economics, and PhD from the University of Birmingham.
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