On the streets

Street vendors in Mumbai are at the receiving end with the rise of malls and with a State-sponsored eviction drive.

DIONNE BUNSHA in mumbai

MURTAZA LIGHTWALA dreaded going home, where his young children and the rest of his joint family awaited his return. "For eight months, I have had no work. I feel ashamed to go home without any money at the end of the day," Murtaza told this correspondent.

For 15 years, Murtaza has been selling clothes on Daftary Road in Malad (East). Once considered a dreary, distant suburb, Malad is now a `hot and happening' place. Several call centres and information technology firms have sprung up here. The malls, which followed soon after, have transformed Malad into "Mallad".

Three years ago, a mall emerged on Daftary Road too. That spelled trouble for Murtaza and other hawkers on the road. First, the mall management offered 28 hawkers just outside their premises Rs.10,000 each to vacate. The hawkers refused. Then, one year later, around 350 hawkers on the entire stretch of road were evicted.

"Initially, we thought it was the routine municipal raid and that we would be able to set up shop the next day. But we kept waiting on the road for over three months. They would not let us work. I never imagined this would happen. It's the first time they totally stopped us from selling our goods. We suspect the mall asked the police to clear us out," said Murtaza. "We organised protests. I was arrested twice and fined Rs.1,200."

Then, Murtaza started roaming the smaller streets selling his wares. "But that was a dead loss. There were days when I didn't sell anything. I had to depend on my brothers and ran up loans amounting to Rs.10,000 just to keep the household running," he said.

Since December 2006, street vendors are back on Daftary Road. But the fear of eviction haunts them.

In Mumbai, where there is conflict over every inch of space, hawkers are losing the battle. In the past few years, several street vendors have been forced to vacate. The booksellers along Flora Fountain, as much a part of the landscape as the monument itself, have been evicted. The city's trademark vada pau stalls now function in clandestine corners ever since the Supreme Court banned cooking of food on the street.

For some, it is a welcome relief. At last, there are a few pavements where there is space to walk. Others miss browsing for bargain books on the pavement, grabbing a bite from the wayside stalls or picking up fruits and vegetables from vendors on the railway station premises on the way home.

Earlier, hawkers had to contend only with `residents' associations' and small shopkeepers. Now, a much bigger fish has joined the fray - the malls. A study done amongst 30 hawkers operating from within a kilometre radius of a mall and published in the Economic and Political Weekly (June 2) shows that 41 per cent reported an increase in eviction drives, 24 per cent in harassment by agents of the mall, 17 per cent an increase in bribes, while 72 per cent experienced a fall in sales and profits.

"Mall promoters have joined the conflict to evict hawkers and revamp their precincts. The competition for urban space between organised retailers and informal retailers is becoming more intense," writes Anuradha Kalhan, Researcher in Economics, Bombay University, in her paper "Impact of Malls on Small Shops and Hawkers".

In Ranchi and Indore, hawkers who were being evicted turned violent. Street vendors ransacked outlets of Reliance Fresh.

"There is no correlation between malls coming up and hawkers being evicted. We are only implementing Supreme Court orders. Hawkers who are in non-hawking zones are being evicted," said R.A. Rajeev, Additional Municipal Commissioner, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

An interim order of the Supreme Court asked the Maharashtra government to frame legislation to govern street vendors based on the guidelines of the National Policy for Urban Street Vendors and Hawkers. Until then, a court-appointed committee will listen to people's grievances and demarcate hawking and non-hawking zones.

"The hawkers near the mall were evicted probably because they were in a non-hawking zone," Rajeev explained. But like all other laws and Supreme Court orders, this is being implemented selectively. Though the court has ordered no hawking within 150 metres of railway stations, the entrances to most rail stations are jammed with hawkers blocking the way of the jostling crowds of commuters. Why is the Supreme Court ruling forgotten in this instance?

Mumbai has around 2,50,000 hawkers. The bribes they pay to officials to continue their business is estimated at Rs.4.5 billion annually, a figure confirmed by the Central Vigilance Commission. However, theSupreme Court order says that there is only space for 23,950 pitches, which should be given out by lots. This means the rest of the hawkers cannot continue.

"Street vendors exist because there is a demand for them. They are providing goods at affordable prices in convenient places. The National Policy approved in 2004 recognises their positive role in society. Now, it has to be translated into law," says Sharit Bhowmick, Professor of Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. "The whole problem is that planning does not include the poor, who are the majority."

There are 10 million street vendors in India. The new policy acknowledges that hawkers provide a "natural market" in public places where their services are needed. It says that no hawker should be evicted without giving him/her adequate notice and without relocating him/her in a place where his/her income will not be adversely affected. The policy says that in every city and town, hawking zones should be demarcated not arbitrarily but in places where hawkers are likely to find customers, and identifying these zones should be a participatory process. It also states that no hawker can be removed in the guise of `beautification'.

"If they want us to move, they should give us an alternative space. They can't still rule as in the days of the British Raj - fight, loot and destroy. Our country can't give us employment, but our Constitution framed by Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar gives us the right to earn a living," says Gopichandra Kusvaha of the Azad Hawkers Union.

"They hit us right in the stomach," says Jung Bahadur Kusvaha, a vegetable vendor who hawks outside the mall in Malad (East). "We roamed the road without work for days. Back in my village in Uttar Pradesh, my children have stopped going to school. There is no money to pay the school fee. My elder son died of tuberculosis because I didn't have the money to take him to a good hospital."