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Society
Smart Streets, Shattered
Lives
By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
Abdul Rafeeq Khan, a
street vendor, died after setting himself on fire on the premises of the
Lucknow Municipality (Uttar Pradesh) in May 2005 after he and other
vendors were displaced to accommodate a contractor. Gopal Krishna
Kashyap, a seller of parathas (Indian bread) in Patiala (Punjab),
in full view of a 200-strong crowd and TV cameras, fatally set himself
ablaze because he had been displaced to 'beautify' the city during the
Indo-Pak cricket matches in 2004. Pappu Rathore immolated himself on the
streets of Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh) in January 2006, a year after he had
been removed and could find no alternative employment.
These three public suicides tragically illustrate the extreme measures
that street vendors may take to as they battle an economic war declared
on them in the form of relentless clearance operations launched by civic
authorities in several cities across India.
 Street
vendors in the capital, Delhi - who number between 250,000 to 500,000 -
have been thrown into even greater despair following a Supreme Court
judgment on March 8, 2006 directing the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)
to remove all "unauthorized" street vendors from the city's streets
within two weeks. The court said that they interfere with the
"fundamental rights of the citizens" by squatting on footpaths and roads
meant for the benefit of ordinary people living in those localities.
The court had ordered that since the MCD had failed to produce a
workable plan for creating authorized hawker zones in Delhi, in
accordance with the National Policy for Street Vendors (NPSV) 2004, they
should remove all "unauthorized" vendors. The MCD has been given eight
weeks to present a realistic plan to implement the NPSV. But in the
meantime, it has been ordered to submit a compliance report within four
weeks on the action taken to evict all unlicensed street hawkers.
Social activists have strongly decried the Supreme Court order, saying
it amounts to punishing the victims and rewarding the offenders. It will
spell doom and disaster for the hundreds of thousands who earn their
living from hawking and vending, asserts Madhu Kishwar of Manushi, a
Delhi-based NGO, which has spearheaded the campaign to legitimize street
vendors. Its impact will be felt not just in Delhi but on 10 million
hawkers and their dependents in other cities, since their municipal
bodies have likewise failed to give legal space to hawkers, she states.
The Supreme Court judgment raises several important issues, points out
Renana Jhabvala of SEWA Bharat (the Delhi office of the Self-Employed
Women's Association). For one, it negates earlier Supreme Court orders.
Sodhan Singh vs NDMC, for instance, made it clear that footpaths have
multiple uses and that street or pavement hawkers cannot be denied their
fundamental right to livelihood under Article 19(i)(g) of the
Constitution of India.
Jhabvala has some very pertinent questions that the Honorable court has
not adequately addressed: Why ask for removal of street vendors if the
policy has not yet been implemented? And who will be given the vending
sites in hawking zones if all genuine hawkers have already been removed
by the use of police force as required by the Court?
If the hawker zones are created after the hawkers are forcibly driven
away, powerful local politicians in collaboration with lower level
municipal officials will eventually be able to corner most of the prime
vending spots for their henchmen, claims Kishwar.
According to her, of the several hundreds of thousands of vendors in
Delhi, only 4,000 have been issued licenses. "Thus, nearly 99 per cent
are illegal, leaving them vulnerable to terror and insecurity unleashed
by clearance operations, whose officials collect vast bribes from them.
In Delhi alone, street vendors are paying about Rs 5,000 million per
year to various officials who exercise control over public spaces,"
Kishwar alleges.
Street vendors, through their unions and individually, have fought long
drawn-out battles in several Indian cities to defend their right to
livelihood.
The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) of Gujarat has done
pioneering work for women vendors of Gujarat. A case in point is the Law
Garden in Ahmedabad, which has retained its identity because of the
traditional 'gamthi' (ethnic) clothes sellers. Lataben occupies a
6x6 wooden stall on the pavement of Law Garden, and for the last 15
years she has been selling ethnic dresses and ornaments in this
locality. She earns a decent income throughout the year, especially
during the festival seasons.
Another successful experiment is underway in Kolkata (West Bengal),
where vendors sustain the city's 10 million-strong population. There are
about 100,000 open-air food vendors selling a variety of products from
tea, sweets, snacks and full meals. The vendors are experiencing a big
upturn in trade after receiving lessons in basic hygiene given by the
Indian government in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture
Organization.
These are just some examples of how civic authorities can work with
vendors, not only to help them sustain their livelihoods but also for
the benefit of urban consumers who rely heavily on street vendors for
vegetables, fruits and other daily necessities, observes Jhabvala.
Street hawkers not only generate employment for themselves, they also
generate employment in the farm sector, supporting many small-scale
industries by acting as the most widespread, low cost distribution
channel of their goods in every nook and corner of the country. Removing
vendors from the urban centers will also cause the prices of consumer
goods to escalate drastically, she cautions.
It is not the fault of vendors that municipal authorities have failed to
draw up implementation plans for creating hawking zones, says Kishwar.
They are willing to register and pay the designated fee, as envisaged by
the NPSV, which "aims to ensure that this important section of the urban
population finds recognition for its contribution to society, and is
conceived of as a major initiative for urban poverty alleviation", she
adds.
As the deadline for forcibly removing Delhi's "unauthorized" vendors
approaches, Manushi and SEWA activists have redoubled their efforts to
engage MCD officials in discussions to map out a realistic plan of
action for implementing the NPSV at the earliest.
"We are demanding that the vendors should be freed from the
license-quota-raid raj of the MCD and police and that the Urban
Development Ministry should create an empowered task force for the
speedy implementation of the vendors' policy," Kishwar says. "We also
want an end to clearance operations until the MCD has created an
adequate number of hawking zones and put in place a simple, fair process
for registration of all genuine vendors."
The activists have also urged the Central Government to give teeth to
the policy by enacting suitable legislation to implement it, in
consultation with genuinely representative organizations of street
vendors.
April 9, 2006
By arrangement with
Women's Feature Service
Top
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The Week of April 9, 2006
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The Poetry in the Moors by Dr. Amitabh
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Keeping India's Hands Clean by Kaushiki Rao
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Apa's Survival Mantra : A Profile of Angela Gomes
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