The street-vendor economy absorbs millions
in the job market, sustains industries and delivers basic necessities
to the poor. It should not be hounded out.
Street vendors form a very important component of the urban informal
sector in India. The total number of street vendors in India has been
estimated at 10 million and they comprise 2 percent of the total
population in the metropolitan cities. Mumbai and Delhi have around
2,50,000 street vendors each, Kolkata has around 1,50,000 and Ahmedabad
and Patna have 80,000 each. The rest are spread across the country.
For the urban poor, street vending is an earning opportunity, albeit a
low-income one, because it requires minor financial input and low
skills. A majority of such vendors are lowskilled migrants from rural
areas. But there is another section of the urban population that has
taken to street vending: those once engaged in the formal sector. Many
such people, or their spouses, were once engaged in betterpaid jobs in
the textile mills in Mumbai and Ahmedabad and engineering firms in
Kolkata. Closure of industries forced these formal sector employees to
large-scale unemployment: vending is a way to eke out a living. A study
on street vendors, conducted by the author in seven cities, shows that
around 30 percent of the street vendors in Ahmedabad and Mumbai and 50
percent in Kolkata were once engaged in the formal sector. A study
conducted by the NGO, SEWA, in Ahmedabad estimates that half the
retrenched textile workers are now street vendors.
The total employment provided through street vending becomes larger if
we consider the fact that they sustain certain industries by providing
markets for their products. Goods such as clothes, hosiery, leather
products, moulded plastic goods and household products, are
manufactured in small scale or home-based industries. These employ a
large number of people and rely mainly on vendors to market their
products.
Often, vendors are people who’ve been unable to get regular jobs. But
they neither engage in begging, stealing or extortion, nor do they
demand that the government create jobs for them. My study on street
vendors shows that their earnings average between Rs 40 and Rs 80 per
day. Women vendors earn even less. These people work for over 10 hours
a day under gruelling conditions on the street and are under constant
threat of eviction.
Another study of street vendors in Mumbai conducted by SNDTWomen’s
University and the International Labour Organisation shows that an
overwhelming majority of them (85 percent) suffered from ailments
related to stress — hyperacidity, migraine, hypertension and loss of
sleep.
Because their goods are cheap, poorer sections can source basic
necessities from them. My study shows that lower income groups spend a
higher proportion of their income in purchasing from street vendors,
mainly because their goods are affordable. Without them, the plight of
the urban poor would be worse. Viewed as a problem for urban
governance, they actually provide a solution to some of the problems of
the urban poor: by providing cheaper commodities, street vendors
provide a subsidy to the urban poor, something the government should
have done.
Despite their growing number and positive contributions to the urban
economy, street vendors are regarded as illegal traders and
encroachers. Their illegal status makes them vulnerable to rent seeking
by the authorities (police and municipality) and extortion by local
mafias. It’s estimated that in Mumbai, around Rs 400 crore is collected
as bribes annually from street vendors. In Delhi, a study by Manushi
showed that the police and municipality collect Rs 50 crore every month
from street vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers.
The opposition to legalising street vendors comes from several
quarters. There are the so-called ‘citizens’ groups and residents
welfare organisations who view them as encroachers on public space;
department stores and shopping malls that regard them as competition;
and finally, municipal and police officials who find it profitable to
keep them as illegal entities. Despite such opposition, street vendors
exist, eking out a precarious living on the margins of the economy.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main37.asp?filename=Bu010308urban_blessing.asp
Agni Media Pvt. Ltd. © 2000 -
2008.
