‘Do Tokri Ki Jagah’

The call for Do Tokri Ki Jagah was taken up in Parliament when Ela Bhatt moved a Resolution in the Rajya Sabha on August 5, 1988 demanding the formulation of a National Policy on Hawkers and Vendors as private members business. Though the members of the Rajya Sabha hailed the Resolution, it did not gain much support from the political parties, as is the fate of most private members business. However the issues raised in her speech are as relevant today as they were then. This document is summary of the essential points of Ela Bhatts intervention, prepared by Sujana Krishnamoorthy.

The Resolution moved in Parliament by Ela Bhatt was as follows:

“This House urges the Government to-

1.formulate a national policy for the hawkers and vendors by making them a part of the

broader structural policies aimed at improving their standards of living;

2.protect their existing livelihood;

3.provide legal access to the use of available space in urban areas;

4.make them a special component of the plans for urban development, by treating them as an integral part of the urban distribution system:

5.give them legal status by issuing licenses and providing exclusive hawking zones; and

6.issue guidelines for action at local levels”. ……..

Though the members of the Rajya Sabha hailed the Resolution, it did not gain much support from political parties, as is the fate of most private members* business. However, the issues raised in her speech are as relevant today as they were then.

India has one of the largest urban populations in the world, with its cities ranking among the biggest A high rate of population growth and migration is likely to see a further rise in the size of our towns, cities and metropolitan areas in the future.

A large proportion of the urban population depends on ‘the urban informal sector for its livelihood. This is seen from the fact that this sector constitutes upto 50% of the labour force in cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The urban informal sector comprises essentially the self employed, who can be grouped into 3 broad categories:

Home based producers like artisans and piece rate workers

Petty vendors and hawkers selling fruits, vegetables, fish and household items

Those who sell their services, including their own manual labour like cart pullers,

loaders and head loaders

Despite the employment provided by, the informal sector it tends to be perceived as antisocial, anti-developmental, dirty, unaesthetic, unhygienic and so forth. This negative attitude and consequent neglect has meant that this sector is ignored by conventional town planning and treated as unplanned urban growth. The reality however is that this sector comprises self employed persons who are trying to earn their living with dignity and honesty. They are poor but hard working. They are an integral part of the business of our economy.

A pen picture of the lives of those who comprise this sector is got from a study of Bombay city by the School of Planning.

53 per cent had been selling in the same place for two generations

92 per cent were illiterate

20-60 percent of daily income ( depending on the locality) was paid as bribe

86 per cent had a daily income below Rs 15-20 after payment of bribes

87 per cent of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, eggs and fish were women

Of these, 46 per cent were the sole supporters of their families

30 per cent of women contributed more than half the income of their families

Additionally, hawkers and vendors were entangled in a vicious cycle of low income and inability to acquire assets over time. It was also found that younger, better-educated persons were continuing to become hawkers. This pattern far from being anti developmental or anti social points to a situation, where in the absence of other employment opportunities, people take to hawking.

How does society perceive hawkers and vendors?

To the middle class consumer, the hawkers sell cheap, fresh goods and services that are

easily accessible, sometimes at their doorstep.

Hence hawkers are useful to them. Hawkers are a nuisance to die upper class elite. They obstruct the smooth flow of their cars and crowd the available spaces.

Hawkers are a part of the everyday lives of the police. They are lucrative when it comes to accepting bribes. However as far as the law is concerned, the police view them as anegative phenomenon.The municipal authorities perceive them to be a hindrance to planning and building a modern, western and beautiful city.

Most politicians find the hawkers to be good vote banks during elections. Though they hesitate to provide for them while planning or drawing up policies, they tolerate them.

Thus hawkers and vendors arouse a gamut of emotions across society. But what the position of an individual is in any modern, democratic society is determined by the Constitution. In this context it is pertinent to examine their position in our society as per the Constitution.

Is vending unconstitutional?

The Indian Constitution guarantees the Right to Work in any place within the country to all its citizens. However the Municipal Corporation Acts of major cities make it a crime to vend, hawk or trade. Thus what is given with one hand is taken away by the other.

So people with enterprise who sell goods and services for a living, those with an acute sense of the needs of the common man and of local demand and supply, who are willing to assume some risk to do business are not accepted by urban policy makers. Hawkers and vendors in asking for the right to vend are not demanding any special treatment. The service they provide is that of any shopkeeper and they are as good as any factory worker. Instead of running from

pillar to post hunting for a job, which is difficult to get, they have ventured into the economy on their own. They find employment for themselves. They do not cause any pollution. All they want is do tokri ki jagah.

For this crime they are beaten up by the police. They have to pay fines and bribes, in cash

and kind, sometimes daily to the municipal authorities. Their goods are confiscated or destroyed.They are often locked up and warrants are issued against them. Their plight is best described in the words of a street vendor in Hyderabad. She says,

” We hardly earn enough to keep us (ourselves) alive. The vegetables we get from the main market get dearer everyday. And when we sell them we cannot raise our prices as much. When the police start arresting hawkers, we either lose our cabbage and tomatoes while running or they are taken away from us. When I hear that familiar whisde my arms automatically wrap around my vegetables and my feet run as fast as they can, while my heart drowns me with it’s fast and loud beats.”

Thus today vending is legal in villages and towns. But in the cities it has become an illegal activity. Is earning through honest means a crime?

Urban space is limited and there are various demands made on it in today’s cities. In this context, we “have a situation in which urban planning provides high value space for parking cars but cannot provide ‘do tokri ki jagah’ for hawkers and vendors. So when space is limited, who gets priority? Those who earn their livelihood from the land or those who need space to park their vehicles?

The point here is that unless urban planners recognise and accept the need for hawkers and vendors in the cities of a poor country, municipal acts will continue to haveprovisions that will call vending on the roadside an ‘encroachment’ simply because you do not plan for them.

The Hawker’s Legal Status Today: A Vestige of Colonial Rule

An attitude that allows you to legally park your car but terms it an ‘encroachment’ when a person attempts to earn one’s livelihood by selling from a basket is unjust. It is a legacy of colonial rule that the legal status of a hawker today is nothing. The British to protect themselves from strangers in the ‘strangers land’ and in their quest for control introduced laws governing the activities of hawkers. (The major laws relating to hawking are the Indian Railway Act, Bombay Municipal Act and the Bombay Police Act) And to this day, we continue with these archaic laws.

It is worth noting that the convenience of the local people was not a consideration of the British while framing these laws. (Before the British there never was any law controlling vendors and hawkers and markets. A case in point is Ahmedabad’s Manek chowk which was created in the eighteenth century by the then ruler). In spite of this, after so many years of Independence, we continue to adhere to these ill-conceived laws. Though we have our own ways of buying and selling, our town planners and architects have hardly made any efforts to study traditional ways in which our markets operate, and how the people would like to buy and in what manner. The relevant model for our town planners has been the ‘sanitised) western model and not the reality of Indian cities and their people. If this had not been the case, hawking would have been facilitated and not considered illegal, an encroachment or a nuisance and obstruction.

Here it is relevant to quote the example of Kuala Lumpur where the needs of hawkers has been recognised and efforts have been made to encourage them through elaborate structural programs. These include providing the capital to set up stalls, making available various designs of stalls, new designs of push carts and mobiles of various sizes and cleaning facilities for stalls.

Need for a National Policy

There is need for a clear, positive policy towards hawkers and vendors at the national level. Hawkers perform a vital function in the distribution systems of cities and should be recognised and accepted as such, rather than being perceived as dysfunctional appendages of cities economies. A positive policy like this will need indigenous planning solutions. At the present stage of our development and given the demographic arid economic trends, it seems realistic to suggest an alternative planning paradigm for city planners. City planners tend to be favourably disposed towards the formal sector while providing commercial provisions. I would like to suggest a two tier marketing system, in which hawkers* activities will form one tier.

This is not to suggest that hawkers will take over supermarkets and shopping complexes. There is ample room for a mutually beneficial existence, one in which the formal and informal sectors can profitably co-exist. Today the best example of this is Japan, where a dual distribution system thrives. Small-scale enterprises survive on the tremendously varied demand ofan urbanpopulation and the informal sector has equal place with the big supermarkets and department stores.

There is also need for an integrated authority to be set up whose primary responsibility would be the co-ordination and effectiveness of the urban distribution system. For this, hawkers should be accepted as the major component of the system and their administration and policy could be vested with this integrated authority. There is no such administrative structure in our cities today. Hawkers have to deal with a number of government departments and have to run from pillar to post to solve their day to day problems. Also the plethora of Government departments concerned with policy and action relating to hawkers has resulted in confusion, corruption and cost to city administrations.

A related issue is that city administrations do not ever think of consulting associations of hawkers and vendors regarding any issue concerning them. That a way out is possible through dialogue with hawkers associations is seen from the Ahmedabad example. When an organisation of self employed women workers where half the members are hawkers and vendors (with which I am associated) approached the Supreme Court on behalf of the hawkers of Manek chowk, the Supreme Court ruled that licenses should be given to hawkers. The Supreme Court asked the Municipal Corporation to design an alternative scheme giving space to hawkers and vendors in consultation with their association.