When in mid 2003 after retirement, I shifted in my present 3 bed room rented flat at Dwarka, New Delhi, it used to cost Rupees 1.2 million. Because due to personal reasons I am required to stay in Delhi hence my relatives and friends advised me to purchase a similar flat in Delhi.
Hence I started managing Rs 1.2 million for the purchase of similar flat which I succeeded within a few months. But to my dismay the price of such flats rose hence I started managing additional funds in order to take care of this price rise.
This management of additional funds (due to continuous price rise) to purchase such flat continued till first half of 2007 when I gave up this exercise because by this time the cost of this house has gone up to Rupees 5.0 Million which is beyond my financial capacity.
To my further dismay my relatives and friends in other parts of India also informed me that the situation of the rising prices of real estate is more or less same in other parts of India also.
I was just wondering as to what has happened to my country where people with reasonable money also cannot purchase a roof on their head? Then a news appeared in media on November 7, 2007 that in this year 2007 itself so far $10 Billion (about Rupees 400 Billion) of foreign capital (private equity) has already been invested in India out of which 26 % has gone in real estate only.
Media further enlightens us that this rupees 100 Billion of this year and similar investments of earlier years have gone in real estate where big players (with the aid of such huge foreign capital) would buy real estate in bulk and release this stock gradually so that they could maintain the high prices in real estate market.
This explains why within four years the cost of my rented house has increased four times from Rupees 1.2 to 5.0 million. I do not know whether 1.1 billion people of India are sufficiently aware (through electronic and print mass media of India) about this open loot which has been allowed to foreign investors with the complicity of Government of India along with real estate big businessmen of India?
Would Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Governor of Reserve Bank of India and Chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India take appropriate steps so that foreign capital is not allowed at all in real estate business in order to give legitimate relief to the people of India so that they may again start having their own house at reasonable prices?