Mumbai: An overview of informal sector 

This city is the largest metropolis in the country and has the largest number of street vendors. The census conducted by TISS-YUVA of hawkers occupying municipal lands showed that there were 102,401 hawkers in these areas in 1998. The census did not include hawkers operating from privately owned lands, land owned by Bombay Port Trust, Railways and other central government owned land. If we include all these areas then the total number should be 200,000 or more. Street vendors thus constitute a large section of the urban work force, and perhaps the most victimized. In this section we shall use the data from our survey and data from the two studies mentioned earlier (viz. TISS-YUVA and SNDT-ILO) whenever necessary.

Social Composition:
The sex ratio from our survey showed that 25% of the street vendors are females. Around half of the street vendors (51%) belong to Other Backward Classes and the number of Scheduled Caste vendors is low. Middle and upper castes constituted 40%. Only 15% of the vendors covered were from other state or from outside Mumbai. The majority was thus residents of Mumbai for a long period of time.

The literacy levels of the vendors showed that 25% were illiterate while around 22% have primary education. Around 32% of the hawkers have studied up to the secondary school and the rest have higher educational qualifications. Some of the hawkers were graduates who had taken up this profession as no other work was available. The TISS-YUVA study found that there was a positive link between educational level and income. The better educated sells goods which are more expensive and hence more profitable. In our study too we found that illiterate vendors, especially the females, sold vegetables and flowers in small quantities.

Income, Working Conditions and Employment:
The TISS-YUVA survey found that the average income of hawkers ranged from Rs. 50 to Rs. 80 per day. The SNDT-ILO study does not take into account the income of vendors. Instead it makes a list of the expenditure. According to this study, the average monthly expenditure of street vendors is Rs. 2088 per month (approximate Rs. 66 per day). In our study we tried to explore how much vendors selling different products earn. Petty vegetable vendors, mainly women, operating from the streets of the working class areas in Central Mumbai (Parel, Lal Bagh etc.) earned Rs. 35 to Rs. 50 per day. The income of male vendors varied from Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 per day. There are cases where the income is higher and a few licensed hawkers even pay income tax. These are exceptions rather than the rule.

Most of the hawkers do not employ others on wages. Their meagre earnings do not permit them this facility. Around 40% of the hawkers we studied were helped by their family members or relatives in their work.

We, however, found that some hawkers in the more affluent areas of South Mumbai employ helpers on regular wages. The food hawkers in Nariman Point engage one or two helpers whom they pay Rs. 1,000 per month besides providing them with meals. These vendors have higher income as there is high demand for their products.

There are other hawkers in the area who sell tea, cigarettes, cold drinks etc whose income varies between Rs. 75 and Rs. 150.
Our study shows that food hawkers had slightly higher incomes.

Another section of street vendors whose incomes are higher are those selling ready-made garments. These people operate in certain areas in the central business district such as Churchgate, CST, Colaba and in the suburbs such as Bandra, Santa Cruz etc. We however found that in all the 75 cases that we covered, none of them operated their business on their own. Two or more hawkers pooled in their resources to set up their stall. The investment in ready made garments is heavy and it is difficult for single hawkers to cope up. The turn over in these enterprises is high, but the income is shared by the co-owners. Hence their individual income ranges from Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 3,500 per month.

Another problem we see regarding hawking is that there are some who are employees of absentee owners or they work on commission basis for these owners. In fact there has been a constant campaign in the media that hawkers in the city are not the really poor and they are controlled by powerful cartels. Our study of Mumbai does show that there are non-hawker owners, but we did not find this widely prevalent. The census conducted by TISS-YUVA too comes to similar conclusions. It seems that a few stray cases are widely publicized by those who are against the urban poor.

The working conditions of the vendors are as tough as in the other cities. Most of them (90%) start leave their homes by 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. and return late at night. Around two-thirds of hawkers (65%) reside 10 km. or more from their places of work. They use the suburban trains for community. Thus we find that the working day of a street vendor, irrespective of her/his income is more than 10 hours.

Hawkers operating in the more affluent region of South Mumbai stay in the distant suburbs. They leave their homes at 7 a.m. and return at times at 11p.m.Those selling non-perishable goods store their unsold stock in local shops for which they pay rent. Those selling food have to carry back the unsold stock in the luggage compartments of the suburban trains.

Hawkers in the working class areas of Central Mumbai reside in one-room tenements (chawls) or in hutments in the vicinity. Even there they start work from early morning when they have to go to the wholesale vegetable and fruit market at Dadar to buy their goods. They start selling their wares from 8 a.m. and return home in the late afternoon for lunch. They return to work at 4 or 5 p.m. and continue till 10 p.m.

Women Street Vendors:
Mumbai provides contrasts as far as female hawkers are concerned. The women squatting on the pavements in the working class area of Central Mumbai have started hawking after the closure of the textile mills in that area. Their husbands had worked as permanent workers in the textile mills and are now unemployed for the past several years. These women provide for most of the expenses for the household through their meagre incomes, as they are the main earners.

In contrast to these petty hawkers the flower sellers at Siddhi Vinayak temple at Prabhadevi, also in central Mumbai, represent a higher income group. This temple attracts a large number of devotees on all days and more so on Tuesdays. The flower sellers around the temple are exclusively women. These women too are wives of textile workers who are now unemployed. They used to face a lot of harassment by the police and municipal authorities while plying their trade. They then got together and formed an informal association through which they tried to get legitimacy for their work. The municipal authorities finally agreed to allot them space on the pavement where they could construct kiosks. They have now increased their income considerably. Their average monthly income would be around Rs.3000.

Transition from Formal Sector Workers to Informal Sector:
As in Ahmedabad, we came across a number of cases of street vendors who had taken to hawking after their factories closed. We had covered 60 hawkers from the working class areas of Central Mumbai (excluding the flower seller) 30 of them were women. Two of these vendors, both males, had taken to street vending because they could not find any employment. One of them was a graduate. The other cases (58 of them) took to street vending because they or their spouses were once workers in the formal sector and they had lost their jobs. Forty-five of the hawkers or their spouses were workers in textile mills and they lost their jobs after their mills closed. The remaining thirteen had worked in other factories but they too were victims of closure.
The women sold vegetables or flowers while the male vendors sold different goods. Five of them were food hawkers, 40 of them sold vegetables, 12 sold garments and one sold incense sticks. We will illustrate their working conditions with two cases.

Mr. B.K.More is 50 years old and he sells coconuts at Dr.B.R.Ambedkar Road, Parel. He used to work in a textile mill earlier but he was laid off when the mill closed in 1986. He goes to the wholesale vegetable market at Vashi (Navi Mumbai) early in the morning three times a week to buy coconuts. He starts his work on the pavement at 9 a.m. and continues till 9 p.m. He takes two hours off in the afternoon for his meal and some rest. His daily earnings vary between Rs. 60 and Rs. 70 but he has to part with Rs. 10 everyday to the municipal authorities and the local police as bribe.

Ms. Mohini G.is 45 years old and lives in BDD Chawls, Worli and she sells green chillies, coriander, onions and potatoes on Dr. B.R.Ambedkar Road. Her husband worked in a factory as a permanent worker. In 1989 the factory declared a lock-out and did not re-open. He thus lost his job. He helps her in her work. He goes to either the wholesale market at Vashi or at Dadar (which is closer to her residence) at 5 a.m. to buy the vegetables. Her two sons go to college while her daughter works in a garment factory for Rs. 50 a day, whenever there is work (around 15 days a month). Mohini starts her work at 6.30 a.m. She then returns home to cook the familys meals and cleans the house. Her husband takes her place while she is at home. She return at 4 p.m. and works till 9.30 p.m. Her daily income varies between Rs. 80 and Rs. 100 per day. It is higher than that of most female vendors mainly because her husband helps her in selling her wares. She pays Rs. 5 daily to the municipal workers to ensure that her goods are not confiscated.

Harassment and Bribes:
Street vendors in Mumbai, especially those in the central business district and the affluent residential areas in the city and the suburbs, work under constant threat of eviction. In fact, from June to November 2002, the municipality carried out rigorous raids in the central business district and in the affluent residential areas such as Colaba, Cuffe Parade in South Mumbai, Bandra (West) and Ville Parle (West) in the suburbs. These raids were carried out mainly under the supervision of a re-instated Deputy Municipal Commissioner who had become famous (infamous for the urban poor) for his demolition drives in the city.

The fall – out of the mass evictions are:

1. A large number of street vendors have been reduced to penury. For example, the street vendors in the Fort area who were envied for being the most prosperous in the city have become paupers overnight. Many of them are back on the streets but they are heavily in debt.

2. The amount paid as bribes to the police and municipal authorities by hawkers in these areas have gone up steeply, sometimes as much as ten times the earlier rates. The street vendors are in panic and they are willing to pay any amount to enable them to carry out their business or to be forewarned about an impending raid. We made a brief survey of these areas after these raids and we found that the vendors pay Rs. 100 to Rs. 125 at a time to the authorities for these services.

3. The mental and physical health of the street vendors has been affected. The SNDT-ILO study shows that 85% of the street vendors covered suffers from ailments associated with stress. These include hyperacidity, migraine, digestive problems, lack of sleep etc.

Even before these raids took place, our study showed that a majority (76%) of the street vendors covered paid bribes daily to the police and the municipality.

Male hawkers had to pay Rs. 2 per day while female hawkers paid Rs. 1 per day. all of them had paid between Rs. 5 to Rs. 20 per day as pavti.

In the suburbs we found that street vendors pay daily or weekly bribes to the police and the municipality. These are camouflaged as pavti.
Even in areas where they are unionized, vendors have to pay bribes.
Mumbai is one of the three cities where there is some presence of unions among the street vendors. The other two cities are Ahmedabad and Calcutta. The TISS-YUVA census found that approximately 14% of the street vendors are unionized. The largest, and most influential, union in Mumbai is the Bombay Hawkers Union. This union has been instrumental in getting some benefits for street vendors in the city.
By and large, trade unions have not been very effective in protecting the rights of street vendors. For example, the unions were helpless when the mass eviction drive took place. However one cannot hold unions solely responsible. The bureaucracy in the city has represented the interests of the affluent. The newspapers too have only played up the negative aspects of street vending. The elected representatives, namely, the Municipal Cooperators, have little say in running the city. The eviction of hawkers has drawn protests from a section of cooperators but these seemed to have been brushed aside by the bureaucrats.