Street Vending in Ten Cities in India

Street Vending in Ten Cities in India Conducted by Sharit K. Bhowmik And Debdulal Saha School of Management and Labour Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences Deonar, Mumbai 400 088 For National Association of Street Vendors of India, Delhi June 2012 1 Preface This study was sponsored by NASVI in 2009. It has taken two years to write the report and the fault lies mainly with the author. I was preoccupied with a lot of administrative work as well as other academic commitments soon after the results started coming in. It became difficult for me to take time off from my schedule to get down to writing the report. The data was collected in a period of two months (February to April 2009). NASVI had initially conducted a survey on street vending in six cities in 2000 entitled, Hawkers in the Urban Informal Sector: A Study of Street Vending in Six Cities. The seventh city namely, Indore, was selected but it did not take off because the researcher vanished (presumably with our data). Though it was not printed this study was in many ways a landmark. It was widely circulated in its mimeograph form and was put up on the website of NASVI and STREETNET. The cities covered were Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Patna and Bhubaneswar. That study was conducted by the present author. Despite not being out in print for the study generated a lot of discussion in different circles. On 30 May 2000, on the initiative of SEWA and NASVI the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India organised a national workshop on street vendors. The venue was Vigyan Bhavan and then Union Minister of Urban Development and the Minister of State attended the meeting. The workshop attracted street vendor organisations from all parts of the country. The study was presented in this workshop. SEWA was in the forefront as the official co-sponsor of the event along with the Ministry of Urban Development. At that time NASVI was working mainly as a networking organisation for street vendors. Soon after this meeting NASVI sought registration as a society and at present it is in the process of registering as a trade union. On the second (concluding) day of the workshop the union minister announced that a National Task Force on Street Vendors would be set up under the Chair of the Union Minister of State. The specific task of this of this body was of framing a national policy for street vendors. This policy was accepted by the Union Government in January 2004. When the UPS government was elected in May 2005 it decided to take into account the issue and asked the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) to review the existing policy and suggest changes if any. The Commission brought a new policy in 2006 which was in principle similar to the earlier policy. There were minor changes. The point that we are trying to 2 make is that the earlier survey proved an important source of support for the movement for having a national policy. The survey report soon became an important source of data on street vendors. The first major report of NCEUS titled, Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector, published in 2007 had ten pages on street vendors and most of the data was drawn from the earlier survey. The ILO too has used the survey’s data for its use. We were acknowledged by all these sources. The survey was thus a notable contribution in highlighting the cause of street vendors. NASVI as an organisation has gone much beyond dependence on surveys or any such props. With a membership of over 300,000 street vendors all over the country, NASVI is the single most important force for organising and protecting street vendors. However despite its success it was felt that a strong data base on street vendors is needed if the organisation is to make further expansion of its membership and increase of its influence. We felt that the earlier survey had become out dated and it was necessary to seriously examine the current changes taking place. As a result of the National Policy for Street Vendors, some states and municipal bodies had agreed to pass laws on the lines suggested. Bhubaneswar, Indore and some others had agreed to have guidelines for street vendors. These could be seen as the first steps in legalising street vending. We thought that it was necessary to study how these cities were faring. The present study is larger than the earlier one because it covers more cities. We had planned to cover 11 cities but we could manage only 10 because the researcher in one of the cities (Ahmedabad) did not provide us the data. Therefore this study comprises ten cities. These are: Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Imphal, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mumbai and Patna. Some of the cities like Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Imphal, Mumbai and Patna were covered in the earlier study. We were able to compare the state of street vendors then and now. This work could never have been completed by one or two persons. We are extremely grateful to the ten researchers who collected data from different cities. These are, Mr. Punyasloka Aich (Bhubaneswar), Mr. Gowrappa M. S. (Bengaluru), Ms. Reshma Gupta (Delhi) Ms. Nisha Bharati (Hyderabad), Ms. Rosalin Laishram (Imphal), Santosh Malvia (Indore), Shyam Sundar Vijay (Jaipur), Ms.Vasvi Singh (Lucknow), Mr. Ajit Abhimeshi and Debdulal Saha (Mumbai) and Ms Rashmi Ranjan (Patna). 3 My special thanks to Debdulal Saha who took on the responsibility of ensuring that the survey went off well .We wanted to collect data on two aspects. Firstly on the working and living conditions of the street vendors. Secondly, on the views of consumers. Debdulal had to visit some of the towns to help the researchers in their data collection. He also helped me in analysing the data by tabulating the main findings and writing some of the drafts. Needless to add, any short comings in this study is solely my responsibility. Finally I thank NASVI for supporting this study and being patient with me. Sharit K. Bhowmik Ela Bhat Visiting Professor International Centre for Development and Decent Work University of Kassel Germany Professor and Chairperson Centre for Labour Studies School of Management and Labour Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Kassel 04 June 2012 4 Introduction Street vendors have been in existence since ancient times. In all civilisations, ancient and medieval, one reads accounts of travelling merchants who not only sold their wares in the town by going from house to house but they also traded in neighbouring countries. Perhaps ancient and medieval civilisations were tolerant to these wandering traders and that is why they flourished. In modern times we find that street vendors are rarely treated with the same measure of dignity and tolerance. They are targeted by municipalities and police in the urban areas as illegal traders, the urban middle class complains constantly on how these vendors make urban life a living hell as they block pavements, create traffic problem and also engage in anti-social activities (though more often than not, the same representatives of middle class prefer to buy from street vendors as the goods they sell are cheaper though the quality is as good as those in the overpriced departmental stores and shopping malls). For most street vendors, trading from the pavements is full of uncertainties. They are constantly harassed by the authorities. The local bodies conduct eviction drives to clear the pavements of these encroachers and in most cases confiscate their goods. A municipal raid is like a cat and mouse game with municipal workers chasing street vendors away while these people try to run away and hide from these marauders. Confiscation of their goods entails heavy fines for recovery. In most cases it means that the vendor has to take loans from private sources (at exorbitant interests) to either recover whatever remains of his confiscated goods or to restart his business. Besides these sudden raids, street vendors normally have to regularly bribe the authorities in order to carry out their business on the streets. All these mean that a substantive income from street vending is spent on greasing the palms of unscrupulous authorities or to private money lenders. In fact in most cases street vendors have to survive in a hostile environment though they are service providers. Who are street vendors? A street vendor is broadly defined as a person who offers goods for sale to the public at large without having a permanent built up structure from which to sell. Street vendors may be stationary in the sense that they occupy space on the pavements or other public/private spaces or, they may be mobile in the sense that move from place to place by carrying their wares on push carts or in baskets on their heads. In this essay, the term street vendor includes stationary as well as mobile vendors and it incorporates all other local/region specific terms used to describe them. 5 In this study, the terms ‘street vendor’ and ‘hawker’ have the same meaning and they are often interchanged. There is substantial increase in the number of street vendors in the major cities around the world, especially in the developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. We have identified two main causes for the growth of street vending in these countries. Firstly, lack of gainful employment coupled with poverty in rural areas has pushed people out of their villages in search of a better existence in the cities.

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