No man’s children

: They come in droves into cities, running away from rural poverty and searching for a decent existence. A lot of them eventually end up as street vendors — selling vegetables, fruits, peanuts, plastic goods, clothes and food to the more fortunate city folks. Some are those who have lost their jobs after mills closed down, or factories down-sized or merged. All these people have dived straight into what is referred to as the “informal sector” of our economy. They come right up to our doorsteps, set up makeshift shops on neighbourhood pavements or start running rickshaws. After all, these jobs require less capital and few skills. In effect, they provide us “subsidised services” to us.

What do they get, in exchange? An almost daily brush with the municipal and law and order authorities for “encroaching” and becoming an “eyesore” in the globalisation-induced glitzy urban landscape. But can we wish them away by merely pushing them away from the superficial surface of the urban landscape?

This book looks at these and other regulatory and licencing processes involved in street-vending or hawking in India, through case studies of porters, meat-sellers, shopkeepers, cycle and autorickshaw drivers and other household-based industries across the country. Liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) has not made any difference to the daily lives of the working poor, it says. “For them, it has been all LPQ (licences, permits and quotas), says Parth J Shah in his introduction.

Long back, Manushi, a women’s organisation, had taken up the cause of hawkers. In 2001 and 2002, the then New Delhi Municipal Corporation chairman had gone in for daily clearance operations of hawkers in Connaught Place and Sarojini Nagar, key markets of Delhi, especially during Diwali and New Year. In no time, the New Delhi Traders Association filled up the space vacated by hawkers, bringing to the fore the nexus between rich shopkeepers and the municipal authorities. The hawkers, meanwhile, ran from pillar to post to get their stuff back or to hide them somewhere.

It is for reasons like this that the book questions, and rightly so, the whole process of urban space management in India, including the much tom-tommed Master Plans. “The best way to make the plans work is to allow them to rest in the hands of those for whom they are meant...,” it says.