Roadies: Hawkers in the city may no longer have to live in fear of eviction

Rajeev Ranjan, a sattu seller on Strand Road, is always ready to pack his wares and leave in the event of an anti-hawker raid by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC). But as soon as the officials leave, he sets up his shop at the same place. “This is my only livelihood and I cannot give it up,” he says.

CMC recently gave an undertaking to the Calcutta High Court that it would take strict action against hawkers who ply their wares on important roads in the city. For thousands of street vendors in Calcutta, eviction is a fear they live with, and many like Ranjan are well prepared for the usual drill.

According to the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), Calcutta has around 1,50,000 street vendors. Ironically, Calcutta is the only city in the country to ban street vending. In 1997, the state legislature, through an amendment of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation Act, made hawking a cognizable and non-bailable offence, with imprisonment or fine or both. An overwhelming majority of hawkers in the municipal limits is unauthorised.

“Giving too much authority to the state and its enforcement agencies would in fact lead to illegal collection of rent from the vendors by the officials. We have seen that the illegal rent from hawkers and rickshaw pullers amounts to Rs 50 crore a day in Delhi. In Mumbai, rent from street vendors amounts to over Rs 400 crore a year,” says Sharith K. Bhowmik, professor and dean of the School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Bhowmik was one of the members of the drafting committee of the National Policy for Street Vendors.

Like in other cities, it is likely that CMC officials and the police are making money at the expense of street vendors in Calcutta.

Millions of vendors and hawkers across the country may have a reason to heave a sigh of relief if the central government’s proposed Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, 2007, becomes law. As the new Bill has various provisions that involve other ministries like home and labour, the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation, which will draft the Bill, has sought comments from them.

The new Bill aims to give street vendors legal status by formulating appropriate laws and providing legitimate hawking zones in urban development or zoning plans and ensuring their implementation. The new Bill would entail less intervention by the courts because of the uniformity of the law.

Street vendors across the country will also be brought under the social security net. Besides insurance, they will be able to get finance under the credit guarantee fund scheme for small industries.

The Bill is based on recommendations of the National Commission on Enterprises for Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), which was asked to improve upon the previous national policy formulated in 2004. After consultations with the nongovernmental organisations involved in the welfare of hawkers, street vendor organisations and others, the commission made some minor but significant changes to the policy.

“The ministry has accepted almost all the recommendations and in all probability, the policy will be tabled as a Bill in Parliament with some minor modifications,” says a member of NCEUS. Once the Centre passes the Bill, the state governments and municipal authorities would have to carry out the necessary changes in the local laws within a year of the date of the policy’s announcement.

Although the policy has found support from various quarters, it has its share of critics who say that it will not have much of an impact on the people on the street.

“One of the major weaknesses of the policy is that it treats all vendors as uniform and homogeneous. But that is not the case. The sector is diverse and the needs are varied,” says Shrawan Kumar Acharya, professor, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad, and an urban policy expert who has written extensively on street vending.

But there are some departures from the 2004 policy. The proposed law does not limit the percentage of vendors in a town or a city. The earlier policy allowed a vending space of a maximum of 2.5 per cent of the total area of the town or city population. “I support the idea of not having a limit on the number of hawkers. Hawking works on the principle of demand and supply,” says Acharya. But there are others who see a sinister motive behind this move.

“The government wants big malls and giant retail markets to develop. It does not see any role for hawkers. Therefore, by removing the restriction, it wants to virtually signal an end to hawking in urban areas,” says Shaikh Pervez, president, Urban Street Vendors Lok Seva Kendra, Mumbai. “It is an unwanted change. The percentage allotted for hawkers earlier was better,” says Arbind Singh of NASVI, who was a member of the committee that drafted the new policy.

According to the new policy, town vending committees (TVCs) comprising municipal authorities, the police, and representatives of the street vendors or hawkers’ associations will decide on the issue of licences and also on the number of vendors on each street. “Normally, it is the bureaucrats who decide about vending zones without having any knowledge of the actual ground situation, and hence it was decided that a committee involving different stakeholders would be more participatory and practical,” says Singh. The decision on “no-vending zones” has also been left to the TVCs.

“Associations of residences, shop owners and other business organisations have not been represented in TVCs. This could cause problems as these bodies may try to stall implementation of the policy. If they are included in the TVCs, their resistance would be muted,” says Bhowmik. On the fears of overcrowding on streets, Bhowmik says that TVCs can take a realistic view of street vendors. “One must remember that street vendors certainly do not want overcrowding on the streets as that would hamper their business. If vendors are regulated properly they will not crowd the pavements and cause inconvenience to pedestrians,” he says.

“The policy focusses only on the needs of street vendors without any reference to public space management in cities and metropolis. TVCs have no local stake holders or guidelines to follow,” says Neera Punj, convenor of CitiSpace, a Mumbai-based NGO fighting to keep open spaces from being encroached.

“A people-centric approach to traffic and transportation planning will automatically integrate the hawkers in the plan. We need a mobility plan and not a traffic plan. This aspect needs to be highlighted in the policy,” says Acharya.

“We are so fed up with constant court orders and threatening postures by municipal authorities that any policy that gives us some relief from daily harassment is welcome, but I don’t think the administration will let go of such an easy way of making money,” says a member of the National Hawkers’ Union, Calcutta.