Sensible people in Kolkata have long given up all dreams of seeing a ‘London’ and tiny Chinese lights glittering at night simply cannot hide the ever expanding shanties and squalor that symbolise the city.
At a time when all attention is on the elections, this topic could be discussed later, but by then, it may be too late. Fresh bamboo poles are being put up on pavements every day in some locality or the other, to test the ground for new stalls to come up — precisely because most policemen are busy with elections, meetings and processions. Sensible people in Kolkata have long given up all dreams of seeing a ‘London’ and tiny Chinese lights glittering at night simply cannot hide the ever expanding shanties and squalor that symbolise the city. Street vendors, as hawkers are called in legal language, have been encroaching every possible public space at such an alarming rate that there is either a master plan to slum-ify the city or there is a dangerous conspiracy of silence. What is important for us to realise is that once the new law is in position in the near future, it will be impossible to remove street vendors ever again.
No one is making juvenile demands that all hawkers must be removed from Kolkata, as this has not been possible in any major city of the world. We must realise that Kolkata is not only a highly politicised city but also a relatively poor one — where millions survive by selling or buying on the pavements, with no infrastructure cost or taxes. In 1996, we saw Subhas Chakraborty’s gimmick called ‘Operation Sunshine’ and also how hawkers were back soon, blocking Kolkata’s footpaths once again, with renewed energy. Crores of rupees were spent by the Kolkata Corporation to build new markets to accommodate some 7000 hawkers who were evacuated from Gariahat, Shyambazar, Hatibagan, Jadavpur, Behala, Kasba and elsewhere but this experiment failed almost totally. In the bargain, areas around New Market, Chowringhee and Esplanade, that never had so many pavement stalls were soon transformed into thick, impenetrable jungles of vendors — a virtual muktanchal for them. Obviously, a lot of money changes hands every day, more so under the present dispensation, but let us come to the new law that we need to know. It is an all-India legislation called the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation) Act that was enacted in 2014 by the UPA government just before it left, but West Bengal did not operationalise it at all till August last year, when it finally issued the State Rules.
But before we get into its implications, we must realise that agitations by street vendors have a long history in Kolkata, as they have in Paris, Cairo or Rio de Janeiro. One can readily recall Ela Bhatt and the romantic story of how she led poor women vendors in Ahmedabad in the late 1960s and 1970s. Her movement called SEWA or Self Employed Women’s Association is a legend of how impoverished, illiterate women stood up against the brutality of the police and municipal authorities. That is the tragedy — if they clear the footpaths they are brutal, if they do not, they are corrupt. Both versions are quite true, depending on which area and which period we are discussing, but then the police in Kolkata or the West Bengal have to work under masters at present, other than their own superiors in khaki. This new tribe of empowered subaltern leaders called Councillors, MLAs, ‘local netas’ and unabashed ‘syndicates’, who flash their bejewelled hands and sport thick gold chains on their necks, actually decide who is permitted to do what and where. Again, it would be too simplistic to say that these leaders are responsible for hawkers in Bengal, as hawkers existed before they came and will be there long after they leave. This new class is only responsible for the present spate of unchecked (or maybe planned) expansion of hawkers and ever-increasing encroachment everywhere.
Successive Chief Ministers have not been able to make big industrialists expand employment here, directly and indirectly, despite a lot of fanfare and hence regimes have to permit people to earn their living through through stalls on the streets. So they squat just below the countless hoardings proclaiming a lady’s achievements and promises, right under the noses of all authorities — blocking footpaths, choking roads, tapping electricity and lighting fires. At the same time, millions who are on the move every day need to eat and what could be more economic than street food? Since these stalls will never go away, as we shall understand soon, the Chief Minister may as well have a new pushtikar scheme that provide running water and drainage near these food stalls, so that consumers are saved from diseases though semi-washed plates. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s records show that while 2530 food licenses were issued in 2005, this number went up to just 5182 in 2017. These small numbers are surely confined to licensed shops that are supposed to be cleaner than footpath stalls, that run into tens of thousands and, obviously, there are no official records in KMC.
Successive Chief Ministers have not been able to make big industrialists expand employment here, directly and indirectly, despite a lot of fanfare and hence regimes have to permit people to earn their living through through stalls on the streets.
Let us come to the national Act But and the state Rules regarding street vendors where the crux is that municipal bodies have to set up Town Vending Committees (TVCs) in large numbers to cover every urban area where occupy public areas. These TVCs must have representatives from local authorities, police, associations of markets, traders, vendors and from different sections of the community and bankers as well, but be limited to 12 for small municipalities, 15 for medium sized ones and 18 for the largest. Vendors must find at least 40 percent representation, which means that will influence policies and section 3 of the Act stipulates that no existing vendor can be evicted or relocated until a survey is done by the TVCs. After that, a licence has to given to ‘existing vendors’ and this could be the reason why some want to occupy the ground before the surveyors arrive. The Act is clearly on the side of hawkers and sections 12 to 15 make this clear. It also stipulates certain duties like not occupying the black-top of the road but these are almost impossible to implement. The state Rules prohibit the use of fire but then how else is food to be cooked? They also prohibit plastic sheets and tarpaulins and the Mayor showed us some model fireproof stalls, but there is no guarantee that hawkers will confine their goods and display to their sizes and areas. ‘No vending zones’ can also be declared, but with the law strongly protecting the hawkers, these are just decorative provisions.
True, this law may prevent policemen from ‘harassing’ vendors but then who can stop local extortionists? There is still some time left before the licences are issued under section 4 and, incidentally, section 5 declares them renewable for life and then they go to successors. Some serious thought needs to put in urgently and ‘vending zones’ have to be determined, locality by locality, right now — before every inch of footpaths and adjoining road surfaces disappear for ever. We know we cannot do without a large number of vendors — we need those who sell vegetables, those selling essential goods and even old books stalls, but the moot question is: how many? And where? Let us decide before the next Permanent Settlement hits us.