notes

hawkers’ cause. More than 32 street-based Hawkers’ Movement hawker unions, with an affiliation to the mainstream political parties other than the in Kolkata, 1975-2007 ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), better known as CPI(M), constitute the body of the HSC. The CPI(M)’s labour wing, Centre Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), has a hawk- er branch called “Calcutta Street Hawkers’ In Kolkata, pavement hawking is n recent years, the issue of hawkers Union” that remains outside the HSC. The an everyday phenomenon and (street vendors) occupying public space present paper seeks to document the hawk- hawkers represent one of the Iof the pavements, which should “right- ers’ movement in Kolkata and also the evo- fully” belong to pedestrians alone, has lution of the mechanics of management of largest, more organised and more invited much controversy. The practice the pavement hawking on a political ter- militant sectors in the informal of hawking attracts critical scholarship rain in the city in the last three decades, economy. This note documents because it stands at the intersection of with special reference to the activities of the hawkers’ movement in the city several big questions concerning urban the HSC. The paper is based on the author’s governance, government co-option and archival and field research on this subject. and reflects on the everyday forms of resistance (Cross 1998), property nature of governance. and law (Chatterjee 2004), rights and the Operation Hawker, 1975 very notion of public space (Bandyopadhyay In 1975, the representatives of Calcutta 2007), mass political activism in the context Municipal­ Corporation (henceforth corpora- of electoral democracy (Chatterjee 2004), tion), Calcutta Metropolitan Development survival strategies of the urban poor in the Authority (CMDA), and the public works context of neoliberal reforms (Bayat 2000), department­ (PWD) jointly took a “decision” and so forth. As the studies on “street on the removal of the hawkers from the vendors” in different cities reveal, each city pavements of the city to give it back to the has its own histories of street vending and pedestrians (The Statesman, 21 March 1975). own ways of carrying it through a combi- Before this, the state and the municipal gov- nation of crackdown resettlement and ernment had made sporadic attempts to negotiation. In India, however, academic evict or resettle hawkers that yielded only research on the phenomenon of hawking contextual solutions. In 1952, for example, is still in its embryonic form although so- the then Chief Minister Bidhan Roy endeav- cial activists have been writing on various oured to evict the book-hawkers along Col- issues affecting the sector (Kiswar 2005) lege Street so that the magni­ficent colonial with particular reference to the cases of architecture of Presidency College and the Delhi and Mumbai. But in Kolkata, though University of Calcutta could be visible from a hawking is an everyday phenomenon and distance. In order to keep a constant flow of hawkers represent one of the largest, more books at a cheap price available, the teach- organised, and perhaps, more militant ers of Presidency College requested the chief sectors within the informal economy, the minister not to evict the book-hawkers. The academic literature on the subject is virtu- stalls thrived under middle class patronage The author is thankful to JU-SYLFF Programme for financing his doctoral ally non-existent. So an investigation of (Amritabazar, 21 July 1952). project. He extends his thanks to Samita Sen, the problem specific to the context of Kol- In the 1950s, however, the usual way to Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Jayanta Sengupta, kata is the need of the hour. check encroachment was to convert erst- Joyashree Roy, Abhishek Basu, Ritwik In 1996, following Operation Sunshine while stables and wayside vacant public Bhattacharyya, Sulagna Maitra, Bodhisattva (OS), which was a move by the Left-ruled lands into “hawkers’ corners”. Thus, in 1955, Kar, Rajarshi Dasgupta, Partha Chatterjee, Ranjan Chakrabarti and Kunal Chattopadhyay municipal corporations and the state gov- Bidhan Roy gave permission to build a for listening to and reading several drafts of ernment to forcibly remove hawkers from hawkers’ corner adjacent to the “Jogubabu the article along with other parts of his thesis selected pavements in Kolkata, a very new Bazar” and the residence of Sir Asutosh and for suggesting improvements. mode of collective resistance developed Mukherjee, in Bhawanipore region. The Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay and very quickly organised itself under the large stable opposite the Greek Orthodox ([email protected]) is a banner of the Hawker Sangram Committee Church in Russa Road (now Syamaprosad research fellow at Jadavpur University, (HSC). In the post-OS phase, the HSC has Mukherjee Street) was very soon convert- West Bengal. been the most powerful defender of the ed into “Kalighat Refugee Hawkers’

116 april 25, 2009 vol xliv no 17 EPW Economic & Political Weekly notes Corner”.­ Eviction of the hawkers became a could earn a profit of Rs 1 lakh in 1975-76. Esplanade (Anandabazar, 26 March 1975). routine act for the corporation during the Samaddar attributes this revenue loss of It is important to register the fact that the 1960s with the coming of fresh refugees the markets to the “hawker menace”. But stalls located along the lanes inside from East Pakistan. Immediately after the before 1972, no centralised effort was B­urrabazaar were left undisturbed. The death of Roy, an eviction drive took place in undertaken to settle the hawkers’ issue. In unauthorised stalls in front of hospital the Esplanade Tram Depot (adjacent to the 1975, the situation of the Hogg market walls as well as the stalls along Rash­ Central Business District (CBD)). But the d­eteriorated further. The plight of the mar- behari Avenue, Shyambazaar and Seal- evicted hawkers were soon rehabilitated ket (which contributed 50% of the corpo- dah were not destroyed flouting the earli- near the location they had occupied ration’s total income from markets) might er plan (Anandabazar, 8 April 1975). The (Anandabazar, 11 April 1962). The new re- have enraged an activist admini­strator like s­election of places where the “operation” habilitation market was named after Bid- Samaddar. During his tenure as corpora- was to be conducted thus provoked han Roy (Bidhan Market). As this drive was tion administrator, the CMDA came up c­ertain interrogations. backed by a sound rehabilitation scheme, it with a plan to upgrade and e­xtend the did not provoke much fracas in the city. municipal markets. Although there were Hawkers vs Retail In 1969, during the short tenure of the some minor differences between the two If we closely look at the operation of the United Front government, Deputy Chief agencies in the matter of the plan, both of local economies in Kolkata, we will under- Minister Jyoti Basu ordered the police to them agreed that before the expansion of stand how in some regions the retail sector evict the hawkers at Gariahat region (the the markets it was essential to “identify saved the hawkers and how in some other centre of the southern part of the city and and quantify” and “if necessary to evict” regions it went against the practice of hawk- a thriving retail upmarket at that time). the hawkers, especially in front of the ing depending on the nature of economic But this drive did not materialise due to the l­egal retail markets (Samaddar 1978: 48). activity that the two groups performed. intervention of Ballygunj Hawkers’ Union­ The areas involved in the first phase of Thus in the lanes within Burrabazaar, the dominated by the Worker’s Party (The States- the proposed drive against encroachers hawkers were not evicted because they man, 29 November 1969). In 1972, the Con- covered Chittaranjan Avenue (from Madan generally sold lower quality goods and/or gress government ventured to evict the Street Crossing to Lenin Sarani Junction), those items the mahajan or the large retailer hawkers occupying the pavements across parts of Bentinck Street (from its crossing found it more profitable to sell through the Chowringhee (now Jawaharlal Nehru with R N Mukherjee Road to the junction them. Even in Shyambazaar and Gariahat Road). Again the mission proved to be a of Lenin Sarani and Jawharlal Nehru the hawkers often acted as “commissioned futile one (Samaddar 1978: 49). Road), parts of Jawharlal Nehru Road agents” to the shopkeepers. A contempo- As mentioned, in 1975, the three wings from its crossing with the Lenin Sarani up rary survey by the police department of the government, CMDA, PWD and the to its crossing with Lindsay Street – and also attested to the fact (Anandabazar, 7 April corporation expressed their resolve to certain portions of the Esplanade-East, from 1975). For such a mutual dependence and evict the hawkers from some of the streets the crossing of Lenin Sarani to Old Court clash of interests between the established of the city. The drive was officially called House Street (Anandabazar, 21 March traders and the hawkers it was difficult for “Operation Hawker”. What was the motive 1975). The geographic area that the first the government to generate equal incen- behind such a drive? phase of OH involved corresponded to the tive to clear the pavement everywhere in The corporation had nine retail markets bulk of the CBD of the city. The majority of a similar vein. Thus, a close review of the in its ownership at that time. These the hawkers were non-Bengali Muslims. operation sites, even 32 years after the inci- markets were scattered in different pock- It was decided that a second or third dent, reveals that the areas cleared of street ets of the city. Revenue records of the mu- phase of the “operation” would be under- traders are also the major retailing areas nicipal markets provide some clues. taken in the Gariahat-Ballygunj, Sealdah and and markets, where the street traders had Shibaprasad Samaddar, the administrator Shyambazaar regions, respectively, that had blocked the shop frontage. of the corporation and the mastermind of been the strongholds of the Bengali Hindu Again, where the evicting authorities the operation, provides an account of the refugees (Anandabazar, 24 March 1975). It decided to operate the Mina Bazaar (a financial condition of all the municipal retail is important to note that the operation in kind of makeshift market, blocking the markets between 1965-66 and 1975-76. 1972 targeted these three regions first and roadway for a few hours at regular inter- Samaddar’s account shows that right from faced stiff resistance from the hawkers vals) in select streets such as the Southern 1965-66 the profitability of the markets (Anandabazar, 21 April 1972). Although Avenue and Russell Street, the strongest was declining. From 1971-72, these markets theoretically OH again targeted these areas, resistance came from the established began to face a revenue loss. The down- evidence shows that these regions had not shops, wine shops, boutiques and restau- ward trend was equally visible in the been touched again taking into considera- rants (Samaddar 1978: 51). College Street market (the second largest tion the “existing political expediencies”. The petitioners earned a high court in- municipal market in the city). The situation The “well-planned drive to clear roads junction, in their favour, to postpone the of the small markets like that of Entally, and footpaths” was “successful” in the programme of instituting Mina Bazaars in Lansdowne, New Alipore and Allen was areas around the CBD skirting the whole- the afore-mentioned avenues for an inde- more precarious. Only the Gariahat market sale area of Burrabazaar and in and around terminate period of time. With this, OH

Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 25, 2009 vol xliv no 17 117 notes came to an abrupt end. The chief surgeon for the party was to consolidate benefit the fact that hawking is not a transitory of the operation noticed with a docile look distribution through its affiliated labour phenomenon). Each of the petitions and how the post-operative hazards became unions by restricting new membership af- policy reports thus relates to hawking as unmanageable (Anandabazar, 11 April 1975). ter 1977. Consequently, the government an inevitable fallout of urban poverty The efforts to recover the pavements declared that no hawker, who had occu- a­ggravated by the refugee influx. from the hawkers since 1969 up to OH in pied the pavement after 1977, would be In the mid-1990s, however, “the tide 1975 had two very enduring implications for given the vending licence. The implication turned”. Eager to regain the support of the the city’s political history. The anti-eviction of such a declaration was that if somebody urban middle classes, the communist-led drives gave the hawkers a greater cohesion violated the norm, then he would not be government of West Bengal made an all-out cutting across socio-ethnic lines and granted a resettlement when an eviction effort to make Bengal a safe investment des- brought them under greater politics, both would take place in future. In other words, tination. As a part of urban restructuring, in right and the left. Let me elaborate on this. the new strategy of the government and 1996, over a period of two weeks, in a well- Given the political situation in 1975, it the party was to tighten control over the planned and coordinated action called “Op- was difficult for the hawkers to unite existing mobilised groups by giving them eration Sunshine”, municipal authorities themselves under the left unions as most patronage but restricting their prolifera- and the police demolished all street-side of the left leaders were absconding to tion further. All the policies relating to the stalls in Kolkata. In 1997, the state legisla- avoid jail sentence, murder and harassment. hawkers up to 1996 undertaken by the ture brought about an amendment to the Their strategy was to forge solidarity government of West Bengal took 1977 as Kolkata Municipal Act that declared any among themselves using the strings of the the benchmark year (Sur 1978: XVII). In form of unauthorised occupation of streets Congress flag, hailing Indira Gandhi and 1983, the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and pavements by hawkers a cognisable and clandestinely maintaining relations with ordered the police officials to take neces- non-bailable offence (The Calcutta Gazette, the left leaders. Let me quote three cap- sary actions to identify and evict the post- 19 November 1997). But, within a few tions that got currency in the anti-eviction 1977 entrants on the pavement (The States- months the hawkers began to reclaim their drive: (a) “Hawkers of the World Unite”, man, 8 July 1983). In 1986, the committee previous positions mobilised by their unions, (b) Goriber debota Indira Gandhi jindabad on petition presented in the ninth legisla- opposition party and even by the smaller (“Long live the poor’s goddess, Indira tive assembly a “Report in the matter of constituents of the ruling Left Front (News- Gandhi”), and (c) “Kill poverty and not the framing suitable laws for controlling and week, 28 July 1997). The government had to poor” (The Statesman, 24 March 1975). regulating the unauthorised occupation of think again of “regulation” of hawking as The hawkers decided to open their public lands and thoroughfares by the opposed to eviction and rehabilitation. shops on 24 March but declared they hawkers and others in this state” (West would remain quiet if the police turned up Bengal legislative assembly 1986). The Formation of the HSC to remove them or confiscate the goods committee then sought not to evict the With the official declaration of Operation (ibid). They, however, kept on appealing hawkers but to chalk out a proper Sunshine, the non-(CITU) hawker unions to the conscience of the general public. r­egulatory/control mechanism to check (32 in number) decided to form the HSC. The anti-OH move gradually took a com- their further proliferation. The proposal The Calcutta Street Hawkers’ Union being munal overtone. The Muslim League was of reform included the recommendation an offshoot of CITU remained away from the quick to take up the issue. In traditional of creation of hawking and non-hawking federation. HSC and CITU took two different Muslim neighbourhoods like Park Circus zones in the city. The report also recom- strategies to counter the operation. For and Khidirpur, the League spearheaded mended the rehabilitation of the hawkers obvious reasons CITU could not directly strong public sentiment in favour of the in low cost market complexes. confront the state. Its leaders used to make evicted hawkers and in some of the wall- Again, in 1989, the Municipal Consulta- intimidating comments against the trans- posters the government was criticised for tive Committee emphasised the need to port minister (The Telegraph, 4 October a “Hindu bias” (Jugantar, 2 May 1975). The have some sort of a realist solution. The 1996). Again, when they found it threat- drive was abandoned before the start of its minute of the said committee resolved: ening as the high command backed the more problematic second phase. Hawkers are there on the streets and footpaths operation they used to flatly deny the of Calcutta and possibly they will remain.... charge (The Telegraph, 24 December 1996). Hawkers’ Movement, 1977-96 To have a practical solution on the subject, it The HSC, on the other hand, took a con- In the initial years of the Left Front govern- is considered that at best we think of main- frontational path. As the operation taining some discipline in this affair so that ment, CPI(M) wanted to maintain a status minimum disturbance is created for pedes- progres­sed, the HSC staged daily protests quo with regard to the question of the trians or carriageways, keeping the existence stopping traffic at key intersections, burn- urban vote bank. Its initial strategy was to of hawkers and shops (Calcutta Municipal ing buses, “gherao”ing police posts and consolidate the existing incumbency with- Consultative Committee, 1989: II-III). moving to the court seeking a redressal out a further radicalisation of the urban poor. In the first two decades of left rule, (HSC 2006: 1-7). Being in government, the party had begun thus, hawking was seen as a flexible strat- OS was followed by selective rehabilita- to understand the difficulty to satisfy its egy to manage urban poverty (note that tion of the evicted hawkers. This rehabili- heterogeneous clients. So the realist step the above-mentioned statement registers tation process was thoroughly controlled

118 april 25, 2009 vol xliv no 17 EPW Economic & Political Weekly notes by the CPI(M) leaders and marked by The specific operation of the HSC in the regulations, conducting ethnographic sur- p­ersonalised calculations of local power market and in the governmental space re- veys to make hawkers visible in the policy by regime functionaries (Anandabazar, 23 quires it to undertake scientific documen- circle, and so forth. The sangram is co- January 1997). Still it was seen that hawkers tation as well. The success of the HSC lies opted by the state and the committee is had come back even in those streets which in the fact that it has been able to convince the prism through which the ordinary the government banned as non-hawking the policymakers that without its inter- hawker perceives the state. zones. The HSC had been thoroughly suc- vention it is impossible to have reliable Jonathan Anjaria argued in the context cessful in projecting this comeback as the data on hawking and that by virtue of its of Mumbai that, “the experience of the victory of its sangram. pre-existing knowledge it can offer infor- hawkers in Mumbai, as elsewhere in India, mation to the state, for a policy, at low cost. have taught them not to fear a regulatory Functions of the HSC In 2006, the HSC came up with a baseline state, but a predatory one, a state that con- In the decade following OS, which saw no socio-economic survey and presented the stantly demands bribes and threatens major eviction-operation, the HSC’s san- document to the corporation for policy demo­lition, against which a licence pro- gram has transmuted into a new form in intervention in the sector (HSC 2006). vides security” (Anjaria 2006: 2140). So in which the state and the HSC have come to In 2007, the corporation took the initia- Anjaria’s version, the hawkers perceive a constitute each other. Keeping adminis- tive of creating an official database on the system of “proper” regulation as the panacea trative and electoral necessities in consid- hawkers operating in the public spaces of to their problems, and therefore, Anjaria eration, the state and the ruling party the city as per the recommendation of the suggests a systemic reform through formali- have come close to the organisation. The National Policy of the Street Vendors (2004) sation which will provide an exemption HSC, today, is to be kept in full confidence that called for a case-sensitive manage- from everyday extortion. But Anjaria does before implementing any regulation on ment of hawking. Based on the baseline not tell us whether there is a consensus hawkers. It enjoys enormous authority in survey of the HSC, the corporation pro- among the stakeholders on the question of managing the informal labour market posed to undertake an ambitious project the kind of regulation. As our study shows, and other informal transactions related of documenting pavement-hawking all this is the question that has propelled the to hawking and issues of governance. To over the city. The project was given to a hawkers’ movement in Kolkata since 1977. establish the point let me identify how the voluntary organisation called Pratibandhi HSC serves its clients: Udyog. Earlier, this organisation had pro- Notes • Ensuring credits from informal bankers. vided its technical expertise to the HSC 1 Interview with Shaktiman Ghosh, general secretary, HSC, recorded by the author on 20 January 2006. 1 The HSC acts as the guarantor. Negotiat- to conduct the afore-mentioned baseline 2 Interviews of hawkers in various parts of the city ing with the lower rung of the city admin- survey. The proprietor of the organisation, recorded by the author between January 2006 and March 2007. istration. The HSC, in connection with the Sujit Mukherjee, known for his close rela- 3 Author’s observation in the field. lower rung of the bureaucracy fixes the tions with the incumbent mayor of the cor- amount of weekly bribe that a hawker is poration and the HSC, bagged the project References required to pay.2 (Settling conflicts among and elaborated the earlier survey by taking Anjaria, Jonathan (2006): “Street Hawkers and Poli- tics of Space in Mumbai”, Economic & Political the hawkers themselves and other informal individual neighbourhoods and streets. Weekly, 41 (21): 2140-46. groups on the pavement. The HSC controls The first survey report on Rashbehari Bandyopadhyay, Ritajyoti (2007): “From ‘Public’ to ‘Pablik’: Elementary Aspects of Street Politics in the “buying” and “selling” of the pave- Avenue and Gariahat Road came out in Post-colonial Calcutta”, Journal of Indian Anthro- ment plots and allots space for pavement 2007 (Pratibandhi Udyog 2007). This doc- pological Society, 42 (3): 20-41. 3 Bayat, A (2000): “From ‘Dangerous Classes’ to ‘Quiet dwellers, vagabonds and beggars.) umentation is the product of the collabo- Rebels’: Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Glo- • Regulating the number of hawkers who ration between the corporation and the HSC. bal South”, International Sociology, 1 (5): 533-57. Chatterjee, Partha (2004): The Politics of the Gov- can operate in a given area. While it prevents Sujit Mukherjee played the role of the hinge erned: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the the entry of newcomers in order to ensure person between the two stakeholders. World (New Delhi: Permanent Black). Cross, John (1998): Informal Politics: Street Vendors that business-profitability is not endan- and State in Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University gered, it also accommodates fresh entry if Conclusions Press). Foucault, Michel (1991): “Governmentality” in business is doing well in a particular area. To summarise, this article traces how, in G Burchell, C Gordon and P Miller (ed.), The Kolkata, the struggle around the hawkers’ Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pp 87- Outsourcing of Documentation 104 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). question over more than three decades GoI (2004): “National Policy on Urban Street Vendors”, Foucault (1991) reminds us how political has given birth to a regime of governance Government of India, 1-10. HSC (2006): An Initial Report of the Socio-economic regimes, since the 17th century, have used that can be termed as the “state-union Study of Hawkers or Street Vendors of Kolkata enumerative techniques or censuses to complex” – a system where there ceases to (Kolkata: Hawker Sangram Committee). Kiswar, Madhu (2005): Deepening Democracy: Chal- count, classify, and thereby, govern popu- be any clear-cut distinction between the lenges of Governance and Globalisation in India lations. Constituting the core of the state state, the movement and the union. The HSC (Delhi: Oxford University Press). Pratibandhi, Udyog (2007): A Pilot Project: Survey Re- archive, the census provides the key govern­ has currently acquired certain governmental port of Street Hawkers or Vendors of Kolkata in Ga- mental machine of intervention. It is this functions such as maintaining order on riahat Road and Rashbehari Avenue. Samaddar, Shibaprasad (1978): Calcutta Is (Calcutta: governmental exigency that has brought the pavement, ensuring discipline among CMC Publications). the state and the HSC close to each other. hawkers, making them amenable to certain Sur, Prasanta (1978): “Foreword” in S Samaddar (ibid).

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