Exclusion by design: a case study of an Indian urban housing subsidy scheme

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban)—Housing for All mission (PMAY-U), a flagship mission of the Government of India, aims to address the need for affordable housing in urban areas through five different schemes. One of these schemes is a housing subsidy scheme, the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS), which has significantly contributed to the success of PMAY-U. However, the design of the CLSS scheme favors households considered creditworthy, with stable and secure income streams. This article examines the gap between the policy design and practice of the CLSS scheme to explore how biases get embedded into the policy, resulting in the exclusion of economically vulnerable households. Schneider and Ingram’s Social Construction of Target Population (SCTP) framework is used to identify the target groups involved in the CLSS policy chain. These target groups and policymakers were interviewed to understand their interpretations of the concept of affordable housing. Using a relational lens, these interpretations are compared to know how the meanings of affordable housing get represented within CLSS policy documents. The analysis presents two key insights. First, the power and interests of the target groups predict their representation in policy design and policymaking. Second, privatized implementation design of the subsidy scheme embeds negative selectivism creating exclusionary tendencies in the CLSS design. Lastly, given the shrinking of the welfare state across the globe, this study raises the critical question of “who benefits and who loses?” while challenging the normative aspects of the policy goal of affordable housing.