| Source – http://www.doccentre.org |
| Solutions
There are no takers for the Dadar Hawker’s Plaza of 1160 units. A Tata Institute of Social Sciences indicates the presence of over 5,000 hawkers in Dadar, raising a question mark over the viability of the plaza They are being charged Rs. 6500 per sq/ ft. (Cloth merchants 10,925/sq. Ft). “Why should we move from our open galas to these conested areas, where we may not get customers at all?. Illegal hawkers are given space licensed hawkers are ignored, while new hawkers continue to come on to the roads,” points Vijay Dalvi, President of the Wholesale Bhajipala and Phool Vyapari Mahasangha. In most indian cities the urban poor survive by working in the informal sector. Poverty and lack of gainful employment in rural areas and in smaller towns drive large numbers of people to the cities for work and livelihood. These people generally possess low skills and lack the level of education requires for the better paid jobs in the organised sector. Besides, permanent protected jobs on the organised sector are shrinking, hence even those having the requisite skills are unable to find proper employment. For these people, work in the informal sector offers the only means for their survival. Alarmed by the proliferation of hawkers all over the metropolis, Citi Space, the Association for a Clean and Green Chembur and 40 other organisations and individuals had filed a PIL (public interest litigation) in the Bombay high court in November 1998. Following this, the HC had ordered the creation of hawking and no-hawking zones… The study finds that around 20% of the hawkers covered in Mumbai were once permanent employees of the organised sector. In Ahamedabad, around 30% of the male hawkers covered were previously working in large factories and in Calcutta half the street vendors covered were permanent workers in the formal sector. In these cities a large number of factories, especially textile mills and engineering industries, have closed down. Over 65% of Mumbai’s workforce is engaged in the informal sector and in Ahmedabad and Calcutta this sector engages more than 75% of the workforce of the two cities. In the three cities the decline in the manufacturing sector has led to a sharp increase in the services sector. While comparing the income of the different groups with the purchases from hawkers we find that the proportion of the income spent in making purchases from hawkers is definitely higher as the income level decreases from the fair price(ration) shops, the poor buy all their requirements from hawkers. Why is the populace against the idea of too many vendors on the roads? One popular myth is that all the existing vendors, and those coming into business, will cause a lot of space problem trying to accommodate within the space limits. Nevertheless a group in IIT, Delhi has studied and found that all vendors can be accommodated provided the city authority is efficient and rational. So whose predicament is that, the poor vendors or the authorities? The point here is to show that the distinction between the formal, informal and illegal sectors may never be perfectly clear. Does this make our project (or any project involving the informal sector) indefensible, as some have suggested (e.g. Peattie 1989)? We don’t think this is true. In fact, we believe that the very fluidity of the notion of the informal sector is what makes it such a fascinating–and in a certain sense “post-modern”– field of study: it defies the simplistic categorization process and throws all definitions into doubt. In other words, it points out that the distinction between “appropriate” and “inappropriate” economic behavior is not a matter of laws or rules, but of definition, motives and power. The distinction is above all not one of legality (which is a purely formal category), but the ability of competing interest groups to impose and enforce their own perceptions of legality. In this case, informality often appears in the gray area between the imposition of laws (typically favoring large businesses and well-organized unions) and the lack of enforcement of those laws due to a combination of the inability of the state to do so and the ability of the poor and relatively unorganized to thwart enforcement. But while clearing the streets he is also destroying a section of the economy with an annual turnover of Rs.1,590 crores. If legalised and regulated, annually this sector could earn the deficit-strapped municipal corporation a revenue of Rs.146 crores. Yet, justifying the demolition drive, Rokde adds: “We are not taking action against small hawkers. Only those occupying prime space and those who have encroached on public space and run businesses with large turnovers will be removed…” The Supreme Court in its order dated July 3, 1985 approved a composite scheme prepared by the Municipal Commissioner and directed the BMC to frame it “as far as possible” before 31.10.1985. The conditions of the Scheme as approved by the Supreme Court in the `Bombay Hawkers Union’ case are as follows: Since the adoption of the so-called `New Economic Policies, there has been massive closure of major and small industries. Several thousands of workers who have become unemployed have opted for self-employment. Already, self-employment groups such as autorickshaw or taxi drivers, are at saturation point and most have joined the hawking trade… The Bombay High Court has set apart only 131 hawking zone roads. The zone roads can accommodate only around 17,000 hawkers, says Chatterjee, adding, “The municipal administration in its affidavit given to the Supreme Court has stated that the stress should be on implementing non-hawking zones in phases (46 roads to start with) and simultaneously making adequate space available for accommodating the number of hawkers held eligible as per TISS-Yuva”… Mumbai provides contrasts as far as female hawkers are concerned. The women squatting on thepavements 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… “Draft Policy on Street vendors”, [C.J31.] The study looked at the problem of hawkers in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Patna, Imphal, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar and Imphal. He found that among the cities only two, Bhubaneshwar and Impal, had made provisions for street vendors by including them in their plans… A member of the national task force on street vendors, Sharit Bhowmik, said the city of Mumbai wasresponsible for committing atrocities. Instead of fining vendors for street encroachments, the authorities confiscated stalls and goods without warning or any concern about the damage or destruction. Hawkers! Hawkers! Hawkers in Mumbai finally have a platform of their own to air their grievances, if only in print. V N Ramchandran of the Mumbai Hawkers’ Union plans to start a four-page fortnightly in three languages – Hindi, Marathi and English. The magazine will focus exclusively on civic and other problems faced by hawkers in Mumbai In Madras: |