Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill

Street vendors are the most visible face of the urban informal economy. Street vending or hawking as an occupation has existed for hundreds of years and is considered as a basis of many cities’ historical and cultural heritage.1. In all civilizations, one reads accounts of traveling merchants who not only sold their goods in footpaths but also going from door to door in the nearby village. Street vendors are an integral component of urban economies around the world. They constitute an important segment of unorganised (informal) retail trade. As distributors of affordable goods and services, they provide consumers with convenient and accessible retail options and form a crucial element in the economic and social life of a city. They exist in large numbers in urban areas in the developing countries like India following rapid urbanisation. As the most visible segment of the urban informal economy, it is indisputable that there are thousands – and in some cases, tens or hundreds of thousands – of street vendors in the developing world. In India they are found in large number in all cities/ towns and even in villages all over the country. 2 Street vending or hawking serves as a source of employment and livelihood for millions of persons and their family members. That is, it acts as a cushion for the unemployed persons, besides those who are displaced form the agricultural and manufacturing and services sectors. Street vending or hawking is also a platform for survival for the small scale and cottage industries as well as home-based industries whose goods also hawkers sell; thus, contributing to the employment of hundreds of millions of workers in agriculture, trade, and small scale manufacture, cottage industries and home-based tiny enterprises. An important aspect of street vending is that a large number of women are found in it. , their presence is a significant factor in the growth of the unorganised retail sector in India. They are not concentrated in the big metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai alone. All big and small cities have them; they are found even in villages. Recently, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of street vendors in all parts of the country, in big as well as small cities alike. As a result street vendors or hawkers constitute one of the most visible segments of the India’s informal economy. Estimates show that almost 10 million persons are directly engaged in various forms of street vending or hawking in India and nearly 60 million people depend on them for their livelihood. The proliferation of street vending activities in India can be attributed to a wide range of factors which include amongst others, lack of adequate job opportunities in the formal sector. The neo-liberal policies pursued by the government after the introduction of liberalisation and globalisation led to jobless growth in the country. According to a recent report of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), employment in the country grew by just one million in the five-year period from 2004-05 to 2009-10, while economic growth over the same period averaged 8.7 percent.5 Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that in three of these five years, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08, the growth was 9.5 percent, 9.6 percent and 9.3 percent respectively ( the average rate of growth for these three years was 9.5%).The total workforce in the country increased from 457.8 million to 459.1 million, a rise of just 0.3% over this period. But the benefits of the high rates of growth have gone to only a small section of the population. While the rich have become richer, the poor people have been marginalised further. Moreover, the total number of jobless persons has gone up tremendously, creating an army of the jobless and disgruntled. As per the IAMR report, 12 million persons are added to the labor force, while able to generate only 200,000 jobs a year during 2004-05 to 2009-10. So, more and more persons are forced to seek jobs in informal sector activities. In fact street trading activities serve as the last resort for the unemployed people in urban and rural areas. They serve as a cushion to those who are pushed out of agriculture due to drought and other natural calamities. That is, lack of gainful employment coupled with poverty in rural areas push people out of their villages in search of better opportunities in the cities. Generally, these migrants do not possess the skills or the education to enable them to find better paid, secure jobs in the formal sector. Therefore, they have to settle for work in the informal sector, particularly as street traders. Street vending also serves as a cushion to those who are displaced from the manufacturing sector due to loss of their jobs because of retrenchment, closure, down-sizing or mergers in the industries.
Business Standard, September 8, 2013