Ease of Doing Business (EODB) Vs Real Estate!

 

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“You have to work on the business first before it works for you.”... Idowu Koyenikan

 

As an internationally recognized consultant, Idowu helps individuals and organizations break through to new levels. He has been featured in most of the business media & his many inspiring quotes have been guiding the business fraternity & needless to say he is from the USA, a country which runs on sheer business mentality! And when it comes to our country with all respect to the few good people in the system (there are some such yet) the term “business” is only been in the phrase "mind your business"! Well, sarcasm & loads of it but when someone asks you to share what you think about ease of doing business in this country & about the industry you are in, well unfortunately sarcasm is the only way I start & I am sorry but I am not the only one who think like that!

Ok, recently to my surprise I got connected with one friend of mine & due to whom I am more surprised to know that our "Mai Baap" Govt is seriously trying to know what are the hurdles for real estate industry & will like to know how this industry can be smoothened on the front of doing business i.e. ease of doing business in real estate which I will nickname as EODB hereafter for ease of writing, lol, agreed that was a PJ & bad PJ but so is real estate! So, let’s know about what is pinching to the real estate & no wonder the pinch is none other than the money which it used to generate & which of late has been dried up! Very frankly neither the system (read as govt) nor the masses or say society never used to consider real estate as a business or an industry in the first place & the people in the real estate (read as builders mostly, though it’s not just builders) never used to bother because of the money it was making for them (read as all). And why not as any business's main intention is make some money, isn’t it & here was a business was making money for every person linked with it, right from the govt to vendors to financers (investors) to builders to raw material provider i.e. land & the end users i.e. home buyers (early birds I meant), so who has got time to complain about the hurdles the business has been facing! I am very clear about one thing, any job never makes you stressful or pinch only if your are genuinely liking that job which we call job satisfaction or the job is making enough money for you to fulfil your all needs & I don’t know about job satisfaction but later aspect was definitely there in the real estate! So, when everything is going good nobody bothers or cares to dig in for innovation or improvisation & we are famous for that that’s why not many wise minds are there in real estate, as what was going on, was a gamble actually! Well, many (read as most) people especially fellow developers won’t agree with my statement but then no gambler ever accepts that his earnings were outcome of luck, he (or she) always thinks he earned it because of his skills, wisdom or intelligence, whatever you call it. Indeed, some skill is required even for gambling but best gambler is the one who knows when to quit gambling & that understanding needs wisdom which is most "kamjor kadi" of real estate & outcome was though on the face nobody (read as govt) used to called real estate as gambling business but the treatment given by the govt as well the society(including media) to the real estate says what it things of a gambling business & that’s why we are in the situation which a gambler hates to face i.e. what if your luck run out?

And that’s why including govt, banks, financers, investors & all allied segments with the real estate, yes of course the builders too, have realized the need of EODB, as no more the luck factor is in favour to earn money out of this business! That way real estate was always a hard & tough & mean business because its raw product is land which is limited just like the gold & no science can create new land unless you learn to live on Mars or Moon which isn’t the case as of now so all you have is land which is available by nature & its decreasing i.e. available land for development. And obviously everything related to the land is complicated in the best possible way, right from 7/12 extract which is "sim sim" word for any land to the demarcation (mojani) maps of the land, all is a mess. And the mess has been deliberately created as if the land means key to the money then the system or person or authority that holds this key will make money by using the key & even the govt is no exception for this greed! First thing to make EOB in real estate is, wipe out old land or say revenue laws & the system defining ownership of any piece of the land on paper as well on ground, so it will reduce the time-lag (which is title of the land i.e. ownership proving of any land) causes in the real estate business! Just tell me one thing if any document unless registered with registrar, is considered as illegal then how any civil court in the country accepts claims made on just a plain paper deal or stamp paper or even notarized & how once a deal get registered even after then title of some land can be challenged? This single aspect of the land deals has increased stresses both mental & financial in the real estate business in worst possible way & high time to deal with it for the govt! (If it wants to!).

Once you are done with the land ownership front then the next stage is getting permissions for the development & they are bigger, lengthier & heavier than "Hanumanji's Punchh", sorry a phrase in Hindi & can’t be translated in English but take it as Herculean task! Because the number of govt departments (I call them, Sharks) involved in getting a plan sanctioned for even a bungalow are too many, that the normal developer which we can call as a common man surrenders to the system & either leaves the thought of development or give it to the builder, which knows how to swim in the ocean full of sharks! This is why so called corruption never ends here & I am not talking about corruption in the form of money but in the form of mental as well physical harassment which is at all levels in real estate. Here, a govt officer can harass you over implementing some policy as well a bank officer can harass you for sanctioning your home loan or an RTI activist can harass you for hiding something in the sanction which you can’t ever fulfil but accepted as there is no alternative, a neighbour of your building can harass you for not allowing work during his or her noon sleep hours & lastly police can arrest you for anything related to the site even a genuine accident  & put you behind the bars like a street criminal! All this is possible because there is no alternative to revenue officer who is supposed to sign your NA order, there is no alternative to some building inspector who is supposed to sign on your plans & there is no alternative to the bank manager who approves your home loan sanction file & the list goes on for every NOC from every dept, you have ever heard of! If you want to get EODB (ease of doing business) for real estate then streamline the entire process of land records & sanctioning, taking away the monopoly of every govt & semi govt dept which squeezes all the blood, sweat & money from the real estate! If you think I am exaggerating then look at real estate in just one city, our Smart Pune & you will find right from Metro Rail’s TOD or TDR (whatever) to granting FSI on 6m wide roads to charging premium for road handing over to giving two FSI for road acquisition in PMRDA just in Pune region there are five sanctioning authorities which have different set of rules & oh yes there are other agencies like Defence which also interferes in the policies (height NOC) or DC rules in these all five local bodies & then there is ULC, revenue & irrigation , thanks god the AIDS control dept (yes there is one such still) hasn’t yet intervened in real estate sanction processes!

Ok, if you are done with sanctioning authority’s hurdles then there is the main & most vital aspect i.e. finance! Joke is every financial or banking institute has home loan wing which is happy to give loan to flat holders but to finance real estate i.e. builder is non-priority segment which in hidden words is No Finance industry of business! And if at you get to convince some banker for funding real estate then rate of interest is like this industry works on double profit (well that was the case) & you have to give equal amount collateral that of loan & with all this burden of finance the builder is supposed to sell at affordable price his product i.e. the home!

And last but not least is about the policy making process related to real estate & the delay it takes always, classic example is Unified Development Control Rules, which took more than five years to see the sunlight, making delay to thousands of the projects all across the city & State! As well, if the govt can make MIDC’s for ease of all other industries where every basic infrastructure like water, roads, power, transportation is available in proper way & cheaper rate then why can’t all such be made available for cities in proper time span as land is raw material for real estate & a land without infrastructure is as useless as an industry without raw material! At the same time policies regarding illegal constructions which is cancer for real estate must be decided & acted up fast, who has stopped govt doing that but we all know the reasons for turning a blind eye towards illegal constructions!

Finally all I will share is any business is risk & we are not talking about the risks here but the hurdles, which we only have created. It’s like we want to make an expressway for faster travel & we only build speed breakers on that expressway for speed reduction & then crying over the delay for travel on it; for govt’s approach to EODB (ease of doing business) regarding the real estate; I couldn’t have given better example, isn’t it!  

Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-good-home-is-good-deal.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way(Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Take your issues to Hon PM at link below..

https://secure.mygov.in/

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com

Poaching; Dark Side of the Wildlife!

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“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”... Abraham Lincoln

Well, well & how opt these words of wisdom of from a person who changed the course of the history not that of just some nation but nearly half of the globe & who else but Abraham Lincoln! Once again it’s his words of wisdom I used as an opener just the way very consistent Rohit Sharma is, for Mumbai Indians (it’s a club, in IPL Cricket League)! And why I used it, is due to a forward on whatsapp I received (yes, this medium does brings us some real good stuff also) about poaching of wild animals & arrests to the criminals in Bramhapuri, a taluka in Eastern Vidarbha. Well, we keep reading many such news & in the today’s world (read as Country) where even a million humans dyeing because of some epidemic, many of them just because lack of proper health-care & many more because of negligence & ignorance, even with such news the media & people gets bored & life come backs to normal, who cares for some wild animal & that too its poaching in some remote place which not many doesn’t know even exists! The whatsapp message also said apart from two people’s arrest two canines & ten claws also got seized from the culprits. The news didn’t said action by which dept i.e. Police or Forest & what happened next, means the criminals (poachers) arrested got sentenced or bailed out & got free on some thousand rupees bond! I am sure there are more chances of the later part i.e. bail to the poachers as again where the court doesn’t have time (and man power) to listen to pleas of thousand of human related crimes & jails are full of under trial convicts again why bother crowding the jails by adding two more humans & for what, killing some animal in forest, what even if it’s a tiger, is what some high paid lawyer must have argued & Hon Judge also would have accepted the logic in the lawyer’s such argument!  And then isn’t the tiger equally hazardous to the humans who are under constant threat of getting attacked by it as well doesn’t the tiger kills the only source of survival of poor villagers i.e. their cattle, so what’s big deal sometimes the tiger gets killed, may it be by poachers or by villagers who were only trying to protecting their lives & property from the tiger!

I am sure by now those who are wildlifer & nature lovers must have been very upset with all my such words but let me tell you, it is sarcasm & second, I too get equally upset whenever I read the news of poaching any animal, even a wild boar or some monitor lizard,  why just a tiger! But the problem is to my knowledge killing of a wild animal has got maximum of three years imprisonment with some Rs fifty thousand fine & if the animal is tiger & the crime happens in core area then the punishment can be of seven years with Rs Two Lakhs as penalty. Well, this is what frustrates me as seven years in jail is good punishment but for that one has to kill an animal in a core area which is protected itself like a jail. For the readers who don’t know what is a core area, its part of forest which is most protected & in a reserved tiger park like Tadoba. So in first place to get inside core area of any forest is impossible unless you sneak in on bare-feet as vehicular entry roads are mostly guarded by forest staff. And then let me ask a question to all the judicial system (law makers) with all due respect to their law making ability, if an animal is killed near village or not in some reserved forest or in no core area or say in the buffer (part of the forest between core & human establishment area) then punishment is three years but if the same animal is killed in a core area then the punishment is seven years then why it’s not so that if a human is murdered in forest then make it less punishable offense say ten years imprisonment but if the same human is murdered in a police station or near high court then only the punishment will be death sentence! People will say, are you gone nuts, what difference it makes whether someone is murdered in forest or village or near any court, a murder is murder, you have taken life of someone then pay it by giving your life as you are a murderer; well, point accepted but then why the same law is not made for wild animals, just because they don’t raise such question or they don’t have voting rights, is what I want to ask to the system we call govt! And then even if by negligent driving if you kill a human then also you have to spend many years in jail but if you kill an a wild animal outside of forest area, I doubt whether any serious punishment is there as again in the reserved forests entry of vehicles is anyway restricted so all the road accident deaths (killing) happens outside of the forests. And we are not even thinking about many animals like hyena, jackal or leopard or porcupine or snakes & such which are abundantly (well, used to) find around human settlements also which gets killed under fast moving vehicles on our highways which we showcase as sign of our development which we proudly call as progress! 

 

Coming back to poaching, our faulty law system is just tip of the iceberg when it comes to poaching i.e. killing wild animals for eating or trade. And we are not talking about wild animals getting killed by our electric fences which we do to protect our crops or un-protected wells in which many animal falls down & dies because of injuries or drowning! Now let’s focus on real poaching i.e. using traps or guns or poisons for eating or selling animal’s body parts like horn of a rhino or tiger canines or crocodile/snake skin, elephant’s tusks & many such! As we the humans can trade our fellow human's body parts (kidney or liver or blood) so how we can spare the animals! Biggest hurdle in proving a crime like poaching is getting a witness as unfortunately there are alarm calls in the forest but none of the birds or animals can give testimony in the court against any human that he or she  has killed their fellow animal & they all have seen it happening! As any wild life crime naturally happens away from human eyes (so called law abiding humans, I am referring too) & at such hours of night that to prove that crime is very difficult. So, all that an investigation agency can do is if they are able to seize the remnants of body parts of the animal in possession of the poachers then to link the crime with them & not many poachers are that dumb! And no such crime is possible unless local people i.e. natives around the forests are involved, so who will become witness against their own people & that too for killing some animal! I think the best way to deal is increase man power to the forest dept & just the way in police we have crime branch there must be a full-fledged crime branch at forest dept with enough man power & gun power. I am saying gun power because the people, who dare to enter in the forests or around the forests at night time risking their lives for getting killed not just by some tiger but by stepping on snake also, are not going to think to shoot at forest guards which are less in numbers & without a weapon like a gun! And if you are fighting against the criminals which are doing their job of killing how can you do it without creating fear in their minds that in the process they also can get killed if they get caught in the action! At the same time often there is conflict between two agencies while detecting poaching crimes i.e. between police & forest! And forest personnel have very limited power while operating out of reserved forests & police are either ignorant or not interested in these types of crimes so they seldom provide their infrastructure to nab the poachers unless any human assault is involved!

So a crime branch squad at every forest however small it may be or even undeclared or unreserved too & then making the natives self sufficient so that they don't succumb to the offer given by the poachers for giving information about the movement of wild animals or keeping their mouths shut & eyes & ear closed against the crime of poaching. One more way is fear which Viraapan has successfully tried for years, threatening the tribes or natives around the forests for their lives so if they don’t cooperate with his poaching mission then they won’t interfere in his poaching crimes, leave opposing it! So, again if some poacher can dare to threaten to the local residents around poachers its failure of the system we call govt may it be forest or police that they can make these locals believe in the system that the said system will protect them from the poachers! At the same time even in protected forests we need to give enough arms (weapons) to every guard as to my knowledge I haven’t seen even the Ranger rank officers carrying a gun as well the numbers does matters. There are anti-tiger poaching squads at tiger sanctuaries but what about buffers & forests which are not tiger sanctuaries, a tiger can always been found outside of project tiger, isn’t it & there its more easy to kill it & even the punishment by law is also lesser (sarcasm, can’t help)!!

And then if by overcoming all such hurdles of lesser man power, no guns, no cooperation from other agencies or the natives if any poacher is caught either in action or having possession of animal parts (evidence) then to take him in custody & produce in the court & make the court believe that this is real serious crime, wow I don’t fancy anymore the forest dept’s job! Well, keeping due respect, we all know how our judicial system moves even when some serious crime against the humans is there & here we are talking about crime against some animal’s which life far away from any judicial system & which has no access to any social media or print media to let their voice reach to the judges! Like we set up Green Tribunal for environment law suits fast track courts,  I think high time we must have Wild Life Crime Courts separate at every district level just to ensure that the wild life criminals gets to the conviction fast. As well these judges & the law enforcement system regarding the wildlife has to have knowledge of wildlife in first place to understand the nature of such crimes as then only they can understand the importance as well difficulties in gathering evidences in wildlife crimes.

Lastly I want to warn to the system (read as govt & the society combine), we already have created enough reasons to kill the wildlife around us & on top of it if we can’t even make a system which will punish the crimes like poaching which is murdering actually, then I need not to be a horoscope reader to tell the future of our wildlife!!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-good-home-is-good-deal.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way(Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Take your issues to Hon PM at link below..

https://secure.mygov.in/

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com

Unified DCR & "Mere Karan Arjun Ayenge" !

 

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“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”...Mark Twain  

Few names in the history of writers has carved themselves in such a way that they have become immortal by their words of wisdom & no need to introduce one such i.e. Mark Twain's. He was not only famous for just humour but the wittiness & sarcasm loaded with it! No wonder when my sharing is about our “Mai Baap Govt” & the way it works, Mark's above words are best suited for it, though no sarcasm can make our govt any damage ever, such thick skinned it is. If you are wondering why I am so sarcastic (what else one can do) then the subject is Unified DCR i.e. Unified Development Control Rules which in simpler words means same building permission rules for the entire Maharashtra State's real estate but except Mumbai! Now, why not Mumbai, isn't it part of our State, is it a plan to cut off Mumbai for rest of the State such suspicious question may be raised! Well, that’s different topic & will discuss about it sometime next. But for now, let’s focus on Unified DCR which now for last few years (three or four years  may be, does it makes any difference) is talk of the town or say talk of the towns, cities & Metros too!  Agreed it’s not something like Income Tax or GST type thing which will affect all segments of the society but yes it does affect real estate that means homes & that directly or indirectly means major spectrum of the society which as usual is ignorant about it. But why to blame the society (read as common man) even the real estate players who thinks they knows a law or a policy before it comes in existence are also clueless about this Unified DCR which I will nickname as UDCR for writing purpose.

Well, how that is going to affect masses we will see later or say is affecting already, till then lets understand the role of DCR i.e. development control rules in real estate of any city or town so you will understand UDCR in a better way. For any local civic body which for Pune is PMC i.e. Pune Municipal Corporation, is an individual autonomous body supposedly responsible for the planning or development of the city i.e. Pune for us. It’s this civic body makes a complete plan of the city for say ten or twenty years ahead which is called as DP i.e. development plan of the city or the town. But then you can’t control development or say manage development which we call urbanization with just a plan or set of plans but you need some controlling rules such as what kind of FSI (buildable)  area you will allow or height of the buildings or margins of the buildings as well density of the tenements & many such. All such set of rules which makes the DP possible to execute (is it really?) are called DCR i.e. development control rules & all individual civic bodies has their own set of such DCR or supposedly has to make one.

 

Now you will understand the complexity of the job as well diversity involved as well discretionary powers to change or say alter such DCR of individual civic body. And then it’s not just the civic body to decide such DCR at their will or wish but after getting sanctioned or freeze at their end they have to send their DP & DCR to the UD i.e. urban development department i.e. The Mai Baap Govt which after using its skill, expertise & knowledge (and power) gives approval to such DP & DCR & then the individual civic body (read as city) is allowed to execute or apply the DP & DCR to the respective city! Sorry, I know its most boring to read & many fellow developers or professionals must be knowing this already but then not the masses, for whom my sharing is; that's why I explained in detail DP & DCR thing. Now, one will ask when all this was in place what was use of UDCR for the State? Yes, for years the cities, towns & municipal corporations were & are making their DP & DCR but the process uses to take too long time (we have witnessed it) to such extent that till the ten year planning been done by then the decade used to be already gone & the city starts facing newer development challenges! And why Pune even the Mumbai, the financial capitol of the country has witnessed it & outcome is urban mess we are seeing all around & the present epidemic has exposed our failure on urban planning front making illegal settlements & slums as hub for spread of the epidemic & both these entities are result of we failing repeatedly on DP & implementation of the same via DCR! 

This is why since long the planners, thinkers & visionaries of the State (lol) started thinking if so much time is being spent for individual town or city or region or districts then why not once for all make a common DP & DCR for entire State. Well, common DP for all the State indeed was bit herculean task is what they realized (fortunately) & so it’s been agreed that there has to be same set of DCR for entire State except Mumbai (as I mentioned earlier) & a marathon research was done as to apply same building control rules for Pune, Gadchiroli, Aurangabad, Latur, Wardha, Washim, Nadurbar or Kolhapur or Khamgaon is really hard. By the way all above names are of cities in our State only & Khamgaon happens to be my home town in Vidrabha region! 

Real challenge was, to understand the growth pattern of every individual region as well city in the State & its needs (at least I think so, it’s been thought) & then frame the rules. Obviously there was huge oppose as well welcoming approach also. Cities like Pune or Thane which already has some well studied DCR were in place wasn’t going to get disturbed much (we assumed it) but many districts as well town level cities were ruled by the local political entities & as the civic body can define or say decide their DCR, they used to do it for their advantage than the cities! For e.g. some twenty years back when in Pune we used to have just five storied building Jalgaon has got seventeen storied building build because Jalgaon Nagar Parishad allowed that height!  Many people will say what’s wrong in it; well nothing wrong, but without any fire fighting system in place or technical knowhow such buildings can be future disaster spots by any mishap, is equally true! And then does some small town needs such single sky scrapper, is the question I will ask & this was happening on many fronts resulting haphazard growth of the cities all around! 

 So finally UDCR was made & has put for suggestion objection for real estater’s associations as well architects & the local civic bodies & yes how we can forget the elected members i.e. our leaders (rulers) of local civic bodies across the State! And here is where the problem started as with UDCR in place the local so called bosses has left with little work for their discretion; a bitter truth which our system is never going to accept at the same time will never going to acknowledge also & that’s why since last three or more years (what difference it makes) we all are just listening or hearing or reading or seeing whatsoever that UDCR will come in ruling & yet it hasn’t! And agreed Pune has got many building permission rules in place with own DCR but right from the joke of Metro FSI ( I doubt even god knows whether it will come even after Metro starts running) to paid FSI vs. TDR to giving TDR on 6 meter wide roads to river side green belt widths to hill top hill slopes & oh yes merging of villages in PMC etc etc; so many issues are just lingering under the name of UDCR & yet development keep happening just like a crippled child keeps growing which actually is ageing!

I am no expert but the real estate is a very local market across the globe & I doubt whether the developed countries also has got this UDCR thing with them as even the countries in Europe which are smaller than our State has different rules for different cities, so why to have UDCR in first place is I want to ask. Because a small town in rural of State may not be needing any height or TDR type thing, today problems are employment, education, public health, transportation & ways to communication & every city & town deserves their share of above things. These all must be having different challenges depending up on geographic location, financial limitations & growth pattern type aspects of the development & how all the cities or regions can be weighed on same scale on these fronts, is also I want to ask to our rulers; as on same reasons you kept “Aamchi Mumbai” out of UDCR’s purview so other regions & cities (read as their rulers) are bound to object UDCR on this basis! And then if you are hell bend on getting UDCR then why delay it for years making the masses & not just some bunch of idiots (real estaters’ who else) wait for UDCR, the same way Maa i.e. Rakhi used to wait in  Karan Arjun (well it’s a super hit bollywood movie) uttering only words, “mere Karan Arjun aayenge”! Well, that was a movie & it gets over in maximum three hours but here we are playing with future of not just some city or region or State but future of our coming generations, mind it friends or else UDCR may come or may not but nothing will be left for the development but Urban Mess which we only would have created by then!

 

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-good-home-is-good-deal.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way(Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Take your issues to Hon PM at link below..

https://secure.mygov.in/

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com