Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has urged the Technograhis to be the vehicle for turning new India. He also encouraged students, technicians, faculty, construction agencies, Central and State governments officials, stakeholders and others to actively participate in the programme. “Let’s enrol ourselves as Technograhis and build a New India,” Secretary, MoHUA, said, adding that the Ministry will conduct a series of activities to create wide scale knowledge dissemination and awareness in the country regarding the use of innovative technologies through LHPs. While launching the Enrolment Module for Technograhis, through Video Conferencing in the presence of Shri Amrit Abhijat, Joint Secretary & Mission Director, HFA, PMAY(U), MoHUA, here last evening, he said that “TECHNOGRAHIS - faculty and students of IITs, NITs, engineering colleges, planning and architecture colleges, builders, academicians, engineers and stakeholders - can register themselves to visit these Live Laboratories at six LHP sites for learning, consultation, generation of ideas and solutions, experimentation, innovation and technical awareness. This can enable the ‘Technograhis’ in adapting and adopting the technologies as per their requirements in the construction sector for a ‘Make in India’ approach”. An E-Newsletter and Six State-Wise Booklets on LHPs were also launched at the event. All state/UT governments, officials Public/ Private agencies, Academic Institutions along with other stakeholders participated in the event.

​At the event, Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA, said that LHPs are Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of AatmaNirbhar Bharat. They will enhance the ease of living and ease of doing business. The projects will give best construction facilities to the citizens. The Enrolment Module will also act as a database to engage the interested candidates throughout the year for different activities related to the Light House Projects and its information dissemination. Five Incubation Centers have been set up under Affordable Sustainable Housing Accelerators-India (ASHA-India) to provide incubation support to identify innovative materials, processes and technology for sustainable construction.

​A Certificate Course on Innovative Construction Technologies, namely, NAVARITIH (New, Affordable, Validated, Research Innovation Technologies for Indian Housing) has also been initiated by MoHUA. The First Volume of LHP E-Newsletter captures the progress of the project at the six sites. It gives an idea about the projects through write-ups and photographs which can be shared with students, faculty, stakeholders and public. The construction work needs to be completed within 12 months in a challenge mode. Twelve volumes of E-Newsletter will be created to promote a healthy competition among the six states regarding the progress of each state, timely completion, to enable them to learn from the different technologies being used at the site, etc.

​Meanwhile, the six State specific LHP booklets share structured information about each site, its technical specifications, and other details. These booklets will serve as a guiding document for technocrats in learning about the use of specific technology, information exchange and promotion of the Light House Projects as a whole.

​Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has initiated Global Housing Technology Challenge India (GHTC-India) which aims to identify and mainstream globally best available proven construction technologies that are sustainable, green and disaster resilient to enable a paradigm shift in affordable housing. Under this initiative, Light House Projects (LHPs) at six places in the country namely Indore (Madhya Pradesh); Rajkot (Gujarat); Chennai (Tamil Nadu); Ranchi (Jharkhand); Agartala (Tripura) and Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) are being constructed using six distinct innovative technologies identified under GHTC-India.

​The LHPs comprise about 1000 houses at each location along with allied infrastructure facilities. These LHPs will demonstrate the merits of the world-class innovative construction technologies. These projects will demonstrate and deliver ready to live houses at an expedited pace within twelve months, as compared to conventional brick and mortar construction, and will be more economical, sustainable, of high quality and durability. LHPs showcase the best of new-age alternate global technology. This technology revolution is cost-effective, environment-friendly and promotes speedier construction. The initiative will prove to be a major push towards technical transformation in India.

​Foundation stones of all six LHPs were laid jointly by the Hon’ble Prime Minister remotely from Prime Minister’s Office through Video Conferencing and the respective Hon’ble Governors and Chief Ministers on January 1, 2021. Hon’ble Prime Minister during the event emphasised that these projects will be incubation centres and the technical professionals, planners, architects, engineers, students and professors of Engineering Colleges/ Technical Universities should visit the site to learn and experiment with new construction technologies and document the whole learning experience.

​The Ministry is promoting six Light House Projects (LHPs) as Live Laboratories for transfer of technology to the field which includes planning, design, production of components, construction practices and testing. The primary goal of making these LHPs as Live Laboratories is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create technical awareness for on-site learning, multistakeholders consultation, find ideas for solutions, learning by doing, experimentation and encouraging innovation, thereby mainstreaming the globally identified proven innovative technologies under GHTC-India in Indian context.

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RJ/NG