Mumbai Hawker Crisis: Decades Of Inaction Leave Pavements Encroached Despite Court Directives
· Free Press Journal
When Justices Ajay Gadkari and Kamal Khata of the Bombay High Court scathingly remarked that “the police and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation are not doing anything” about the hawkers’ issue and asked, “Where will the common man go?” there was an unmistakable déjà vu.
The judges rapped the authorities for their inability to identify illegal hawkers or take action and pointed out that, despite the directions by the Supreme Court of India, the situation has “remained as it is”.
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This is the crux of the issue—the situation persisting or worsening by the year as street vendors occupy larger areas—not only in Mumbai but in cities across India, from large metropolitan ones like Delhi and Kolkata to smaller cities like Bengaluru, Indore, Jaipur, and Kochi.
A decades-long unresolved issue
Mumbai’s authorities renewed their attention to the problem after the BMC elections earlier this year, after Mayor Ritu Tawde campaigned against hawkers as “Bangladeshis”. The courts have been seized of the issue since the mid-80s.
That’s 40 long years of arguments, policy-making, periodic eviction drives, routine hafta collections, clashes between pedestrians and street vendors occupying and overrunning pavements, unions agitating to push hawkers’ and vendors’ interests, courts issuing directions or orders now and then, and the authorities in every city pretending to act but showing no genuine intent to resolve the issue. What else but lack of intent explains the fact that the issue stubbornly persists for four decades?
Balancing livelihoods and regulation
There is no basis to argue that hawkers and street vendors should be allowed to function without licences, occupying every inch of pavements or roads, and posing risks or obstacles for pedestrians and vehicular traffic.
Equally, it cannot be that there is no hawking or street vending in cities; this forms a major segment of the informal economy that keeps every city functioning, providing much-needed services as well as employment to lakhs.
A plethora of studies have shown that many hawkers and vendors are migrants to cities, and street vending is a viable option thanks to the low investment and minimum skill set it requires, but their proliferation has posed a challenge to urban planning and governance.
Planning failures and accountability
Planners and authorities have not included the informal in formal master plans, turning hawkers and vendors, among other informal sectors, into ‘encroachers’. If they did, the process was not followed through, like the Town Vending Committees being largely non-functional.
The spatial conflicts are not between hawkers and pedestrians; they are the outcome of the municipal authorities’ failure to allocate space in a fair, policy-based manner and enforce strict regulations against violators. The street vendor is the smallest player in the urban market economy.
The responsibility to officially acknowledge this, accommodate licensed vendors in city plans, and discourage the rest falls squarely on the state governments and municipal authorities in every city. The Bombay HC rapped the right knuckles. Will they act with intent now?