ABSTRACT
Housing has been one of the most significant issues facing governments in the post-colonial countries of the South, including all the countries of South Asia. Hardoy and Satterthwaite (1997: 265) stated that
Overall, the number of urban dwellers living in very poor conditions has grown rapidly, even though most nations are much wealthier than they were in 1950. An estimate for 1990 suggests that at least 600 million urban dwellers live in life threatening or health-threatening homes and neighbourhoods because of poor quality shelter, dangerous sites, and inadequate provision for safe water supplies, sanitation, drainage or health care.
India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the three largest South Asian countries in terms of their population, have, with the active encouragement of the World Bank and other agencies, all adopted formal institutional approaches to meeting urban housing need. Yet the scale of the task remains daunting, and the failure of successive programmes to meet their objectives has resulted in a sense of continuing experiment in the field of urban housing.