A Board for housing schemes and a separate law for slum improvement: the two statutes under Kerala's house-building help

Background

Kerala has just raised the housing assistance it pays Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and fishing families, and the statutory frame under such help is older than any single scheme. The Kerala State Housing Board Act, 1971 asked for planned, organised direction in preparing and carrying out housing and improvement schemes, and set up a State Housing Board to do that work. A decade later the Kerala Slum Areas Improvement and Clearance Act, 1981 set out extensive provisions for the improvement and development of slums. The rural counterpart of the same period is the Kerala State Rural Development Act, 1971, which provided for a Board for conducting development schemes in rural areas. All three sit under what the Kerala Legislature records as its social welfare legislation. Two of them create standing Boards rather than one-time programmes. The Legislature places two more statutes in the same body of social welfare law: a 1993 Act for the Kerala State Commission for Backward Classes, and a 1995 Act for the Kerala Women's Commission.