LIVELIHOOD ISSUES
Targeting hawkers
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's drive to evict hawkers from the
streets of the city raises protests and a slew of issues.
DIONNE BUNSHA
in Mumbai
BULLDOZERS are relentlessly tearing down the livelihoods of hawkers on many of
Mumbai's roads. And a battle is on between the thousands of evicted hawkers and
Chandrashekhar Rokde, Deputy Municipal Commissioner. Rokde is adamant on
implementing a 16-year-old Supreme Court order that bans hawking on the city's
main streets.
ASHIMA NARAIN
Chapatis on the road. The court order disallows
cooking on the street and vending after 10 p.m.
Implementation of the 1985 court order would
drastically transform the city, which never sleeps
and which thrives on enterprise. In many ways,
Mumbai's hawkers symbolise the city's spirit of
ingenuity and drive. The order prevents them from
doing business using handcarts or tables. It
disallows vending after 10 p.m. and cooking on the
street. If Rokde has his way, the drive will mark
the end of Mumbai's trademark junk food - pau bhaji, bhel puri and vada pau.
Chaiwallahs, who serve tea to thousands of office-goers as well as establishments
every day, will also be gone.
In October and November, 2001, Rokde pushed more than 5,000 vendors off the
streets. He estimates that once he is through, at least 20,000 - who would account for
10 per cent of the city's two lakh hawkers - will be cleared from the city's busy street.
"We are only clearing around 60 of the city's main roads, particularly the ones near
railway stations, so that Mumbai's 70 lakh train commuters can have free access to the
station. Some streets are so congested with hawkers that buses have had to change
their routes," says Rokde. 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."
But this claim is often not true. Radhika Dhoiphode, who sold vegetables at Dadar,
earned Rs.3,000 a month. "Even that was not enough to run a household of eight," she
said. "For the past two months, they have not allowed us to do business. How will we
survive? I have four children in school. I am the sole earning member in the family,"
she says.
The municipal authorities want to shift Dadar's vendors into a five-storeyed 'hawkers
plaza'. "We don't mind shifting to an open market close to the main Dadar station. But
if you send us into a building, our business will collapse. Mumbai's commuters don't
have the time to climb five floors to buy some vegetables," Radhika points out.
"Besides, they want us to pay Rs.one lakh per stall in the hawking plaza. I don't have
that kind of money. If I did, I wouldn't be selling on the street," she explained. There
is a proposal to replicate this project throughout the city if it is successful.
However, in Rokde's view Dadar's hawkers are "lucky". "The municipal corporation
has constructed a hawkers' plaza for them. Why should illegal occupants be
rehabilitated at the cost of taxpayers? The other hawkers will have to go to the 131
streets of Mumbai's 1,000-odd roads that the Supreme Court has marked as 'hawking
zones'. We cannot allow these illegal activities to continue, or they will convert the
roads into slums," Rokde says. But these 131 roads, he admits, can accommodate only
20,000 to 40,000 hawkers, leaving little room for the remaining 1.60 lakh hawkers.
Where roads have been earmarked as 'hawking zones', there has been stiff opposition
from local residents and shopkeepers' associations: all of them patronise hawkers but
do not want them in their own backyard.
When asked how hawkers are expected to earn a living in the absence of any plans for
their rehabilitation, Rokde said: "If they have a problem, they should approach the
court. There is strong opposition to them from residents and traders. We cannot go
against the wishes of the court or the city's residents". But Mumbai's hawkers too are
its residents.
The manner in which the municipal demolition squads have conducted their raids has
been no less brutal. Bhagita Krishna Gaikwad, a vegetable vendor of Dadar, was put
in the lock-up for two days. "We were all rounded up and put in jail for two days.
They cursed and beat one old woman," she recalled. The municipal corporation then
hired the services of private security agencies to patrol the streets and ensure that the
hawkers do not return. "Even now, when we go back to the street, private security
guards grab our goods. They don't tell us where to claim them from. We don't have
the time or resources to keep running between the municipal office and the police
station. I need to keep earning every day to stay alive," said Bhagita.
Hawkers at Dadar claim that the police entered a hawker's house at night and seized
his goods. He had to pay a fine of Rs.1,200. According to Mumbai hawkers union
leader Suresh Kapile, on Deepavali day, two children who were selling firecrackers
were arrested. "Ask the municipal authorities to step into our shoes for one day and
they will know what it is like to stand in the street all day, to keep running away from
the police, to rebuild stalls every time they break them. They are comfortable with
their steady jobs," said Rafiq Mohammed Attar, who has been selling nimbu paani
(lime juice) in suburban Andheri for the past 20 years. "A government that cannot
provide jobs to its people has no right to take away our only source of livelihood. The
police say we are illegal occupants. What kind of justice is this?" he asks.
ASHIMA NARAIN
At a wayside eatery in Mumbai. Hawkers cater
to a large section of the city's population, selling
a range of things from food to books and
clothes.
Kapile points out that the 1985 Supreme Court
judgment states that subject to reasonable
restrictions, hawkers have a right to do their
business in the public interest. Another judgment
given by the court in 1989 upheld the hawkers' right to earn a livelihood as a
fundamental right under Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution, which relates to the
right to trade.
Hawkers apparently got a better deal before Independence. Mumbai had 14,000
licensed hawkers in 1950. Then the municipal authorities decided to stop issuing
licences. In 1988, they introduced the 'pauti' system, whereby hawkers paid the
municipality daily cleaning charges (between Rs.5 and Rs.15 which was later
increased to Rs.30 and Rs.100) and were issued a receipt. This gave their trade some
legitimacy. However, in 1998, following a High Court order the system was stopped.
The municipal corporation had been earning Rs.30 to Rs.40 lakhs a day, or Rs.146
crores annually, through the 'pauti' system. According to Rokde, now that money is
being given as bribes to municipal and police officials. Asked about the regular hafta
(bribe) collections by the municipal authorities, which have in turn allowed 'illegal'
hawkers to flourish, Rokde said: "The first offence is with the bribe giver. Anyway,
we don't want their hafta anymore. We want them to go away."
The hawkers' contribution to the economy is hardly acknowledged. Their annual
turnover is estimated to be Rs.1,590 crores. A survey conducted by the Tata Institute
of Social Sciences and the Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) in 1997,
when the plan to allocate hawking zones was mooted, found that there were 1.02 lakh
hawkers who comprised 1.6 per cent of Mumbai's 12 million residents. Since then, the
vendor population is estimated to have risen to over two lakhs. The Mumbai Hawkers
Union claims that the figure is three lakhs.
In Mumbai, around 20 per cent of the hawkers are those who have been retrenched
from mills or other industries, said Dr. Sharit Bhowmick, head of Bombay
University's Sociology Department. They have been forced into the city's unorganised
sector, which comprises 65 per cent of the workforce. Hawkers serve a large section
of Mumbai's population - selling everything from food to books and clothes. "Where
else can I grab a bite on my way back home? It's so cheap and convenient. Please ask
them to put back the chai shop, the vada pau and Chinese food stall outside my office.
They have the best food. They are not blocking the roads, the street is bare without
them," said an office secretary in south Mumbai's commercial area.
The National Alliance of Street Vendors, led by Magsaysay award-winning social
activist Ela Bhatt, is in the forefront of the pro-hawker movement and is organising an
International Convention of Hawkers in Kolkata in February. Nobel laureate Amartya
Sen and Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy are likely to attend the convention.
Representatives of hawkers' organisations from countries such as Korea, Singapore,
Vietnam and Pakistan will meet at the convention. The Indian office of the
International Labour Organisation has also emphasised the need for formulating a
labour policy for workers in the informal sector, and has called for the prevention of
any repressive measures against hawkers.
In an effort to organise the street vending business, the Central government had set up
a task force on street vendors/hawkers. The Centre wrote to the Maharashtra
government on October 18, 2001, asking it to direct all enforcement authorities to stop
the removal of hawkers until a national policy on street vendors is finalised. However,
in Rokde's opinion it is important to uphold the Supreme Court judgment, or else the
municipal authorities can be hauled up for contempt of court. However, Kapile points
out, "The municipal corporation chooses to implement the judgment selectively. If it
wants to create hawking zones, it should regularise hawking and provide alternative
pitches to people before coming at them with bulldozers."
While the municipal corporation has chosen to target the hawkers, it has spared illegal
encroachments by the elite and the politically powerful. In fact, some of the biggest
shop-owners of Dadar who are demanding the removal of hawkers, have encroached
the streets. Ironically, some of them started out as hawkers selling saris on the street.