Street smart

Hostility towards hawkers is not a new phenomenon in India municipal agencies in all our big cities have tried to clear the streets of the chaos and congestion caused by street vendors. While many middle-class residents,welfare associations and organisations see hawkers as an annoyance or a menace who block traffic,take over sidewalks and public squares and depress real estate prices,they keep our cities thrumming,providing the abundance of informal services that define urban living. Now,the Supreme Court has taken a nuanced view,underscoring that hawkers were exercising their fundamental right to occupation,but also suggesting that the municipal agencies respect that right while trying to minimise conflict with other needs like pedestrian use. Instead of being subjected to varying executive whims,the court suggests a positive recognition of their rights and asked for the Model Street Vendors Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Bill to be pushed through by June next year.

Rural poverty pushes waves of people to the city,and they make a living by filling important needs in the place they migrate to. Relatively easy entry and low capital costs make street vending the natural option for them. Whether it is a quick haircut and shave by the side of the street,selling magazines and mosquito-zappers,or a cold drink and a slice of coconut,this a richly striated mobile marketplace. These hawkers are not scroungers,they are service-providers. Besides,they also provide informal security,minimising the sense of threat in public spaces. However,the threat of demolition and harassment hangs over them as long as there is no law acknowledging their rights.

However,structured regulation would forge a sensible balance between the competing rights of street vendors and pedestrians and other inhabitants. Licences and delineated hawking zones,or systems of registration,would bring these micro-entrepreneurs into the legal fold,and reduce bribes and threats,and the periodic use of arbitrary power over them. Keeping these hawkers in a limbo between legality and illegality might suit the interests of petty power,but is deeply unjust,as the court has underscored.