A national-level organisation is helping street vendors know and exercise their legal rights
They came at 9 pm one night, confiscated her bamboo tripod, snatched the pan in which oil was still simmering and scared the daylights out of her young children. Deprived of her equipment, Kanchan could not fry and sell samosas in New Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar for the next three months. Kanchan’s story is commonplace, but it illustrates the plight of the estimated 10 million street vendors in India. “Street vendors are soft targets. Illiterate, poor and often unaware of their rights, they have been shortchanged by urban planners, who believe that cities look prettier when there are no poor people in them,” says Arbind Singh, founder and national coordinator, National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), a federation of street vendor organisations across the country.
Since its formation in 2003, NASVI has worked towards creating a supportive environment for the street vendors to carry out their legitimate vending. “Street vendors provide key services to urban neighbourhoods, even as they make them culturally vibrant and diverse,” says Singh. But with increased crowding in Indian cities, the spaces for street vendors have shrunk. “Today, when we casually purchase vegetables or have shoes repaired by a roadside vendor, most of us don’t realise how hard it is for him to ply his trade,” says Singh.
State governments are supposed to issue licences to vendors, but haven’t done so in years. In Sarojini Nagar alone, Kanchan says that of the 1500-odd vendors that ply their trade there, merely 250 have licenses. Without any official papers, vendors like Kanchan allege that they are forced to pay regular protection money to the municipal authorities and police, and yet suffer multiple surprise raids every day0. “Agents of the authorities come around and demand weekly payments of Rs 800 on behalf of the municipal corporation, and Rs 700 for the police,” she says. Not surprisingly, many vendors end up taking loans from local moneylenders and when they cannot repay them, they leave the city never to return.
“The fact is that street vendors are here to stay, and they have a right to earn a livelihood. It is the government’s duty to provide them with this,” says Singh. In 2014, NASVI’s efforts bore fruit when the historic legislation, Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, was enacted by Parliament. Under this law, not only are street vendors demanding a proper space to earn a decent livelihood, but also that state governments create schemes to issue sufficient vending licenses, he adds.
Singh and his cohorts at NASVI have been working to implement the new legislation, with notable success. When last year, street vendors in Delhi’s Jama Masjid area were forcibly evicted, they appealed with legal aid from NASVI and won their case in court. The court has directed the authorities to find them alternate space before evicting them. Some cities like Guwahati are setting up designated vending zones. One of NASVI’s most popular projects has been the annual Street Food Festival in Delhi, which not only showcases the unique talents of food vendors but also sensitises the public to the issues that street vendors face. “Now we are working to build and improve capacities of food vendors through training and improving their hygiene standards,” says Singh.
NASVI is now working to ensure the proper implementation of the law across India. However, they have their work cut out because the law in its present form leaves the onus of implementation to the local municipalities. NASVI is carrying out surveys of street vendors in a few cities and is also educating vendors about their rights. “Many of us now realise that we don’t need to pay bribes to earn a living,” says Kanchan. The second roadblock in the development of the unorganised street vending sector is that they have little access to financial services. This is detrimental not only to their growth and expansion plans, but also to the quality of services that they are able to provide. NASVI is helping vendors obtain loans through government schemes. “Many of these schemes are excellent, we’re simply ensuring that they reach their beneficiaries on time,” says Singh.
The results are palpable. Dalchand, a chaat-seller from Old Delhi, has been transformed into a confident businessman with a roaring chaat business, owing to the training from NASVI and the exposure he received at World Street Food Congress, Singapore. Indra Kumar, a 25-year-old aloo bonda maker from Jabalpur has doubled his business after training at NASVI. Not only is he focused on hygiene, he has tweaked his chutney with fusion flavours that his customers have greatly appreciated. As for Kanchan, she spends a lot of time educating vendors in Sarojini Nagar about their rights. “We don’t need to be scared anymore.”
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