Can Mumbai bridge the gap between citizen convenience and hawker rights?

Almost 25 years ago, Sangeeta Ahire started work in Mumbai's Raheja Township as a vegetable vendor. Today, she's as much a landmark as the nearby Sai Baba Temple. There was not a single vendor around when the township in Malad East was in its infancy, remembers resident Dharmesh Morarka. "We'd go all the way to the station to buy produce. That changed when Sangeeta came here," he says. Her success not only prompted other phal and sabziwalas to surface in the area, but also enabled her to save enough for a one-room kitchen in the colony and a beat-up Maruti 800.

The extent of Sangeeta's inclusion in the township she serves could well be a rarity for hawkers. Not least in context of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) recently-scrapped draft Development Plan (DP) 2014-2034. One of its most criticised proposals (and there were many) was to introduce hawking zones in certain residential areas. How much can one's right to earn a living dictate another's right to quietude and open spaces, people ask. It's a pertinent question.

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 cemented hawking as a legitimate source of income. But it also mandated enforcement of vending and no-vending zones and the creation of a Town Vending Committee (TVC). This committee, comprising hawkers' unions, citizens' groups, civic officials and architects, has to identify and demarcate hawking zones, certify vendors, and conduct surveys every five years. Hawkers in no-vending zones must be relocated, but only after being given a month's notice.
Then, there's this: In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that (regulated) hawking mustn't be disallowed on pavements on grounds that they're only for pedestrian use. But hawkers have to comply with Development Control Rules – meaning vending on pavements and roads that don't have a shopping line isn't permitted, and neither is vending in exclusively-residential or non-commercial areas.

So legally speaking, residents in Dadar Parsi Colony, Pali Hill and pockets in Andheri, Colaba and Santacruz were right to be miffed with the draft DP. "There must be a balance between citizens' needs and the vendor's right to a livelihood. The latter can't overtake the former. That seems to have happened in the draft DP," says Gerson da Cunha, convenor and trustee of citizens' groups AGNI and NAGAR, respectively. "Our pavements and areas near stations, schools and religious institutions have been overrun because the law – never mind which one – hasn't been enforced."

(Not) far from the madding crowd
Areas near railway stations are the most claustrophobic in a city bursting at the seams. Much of the blame is placed on hawkers selling wares at entry points and on over bridges – strictly prohibited not only in the Railway Act 1989, but also in the Vendors Act. But Sharit Bhowmik, National Fellow of Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), highlights Mumbai's demand-supply dynamics. For a majority of commuters, he says, having hawkers a stone's throw away is most convenient.

People returning home from work aren't going to walk long distances to buy produce. "The congestion is mostly by vendors of non-perishable goods such as clothes and trinkets. A possible solution is to have only vendors of perishable items near stations," he adds. Bhowmik recounts the time 250 women signed a memorandum to have evicted hawkers return to Vile Parle station (East) as they had to walk a kilometre to buy vegetables. Moreover, the space once occupied by hawkers had been taken over by private cars, making matters worse.

But vendors can't be allowed to mushroom everywhere, says Milind Mhaske, project director at Praja Foundation. "And you can't allow those without permits to claim ownership of a spot just because they've been there for years."
That said, Mhaske believes private vehicles are more a nuisance than hawkers. "Why should private vehicle owners be given free parking on roads? I'd rather have that space used for hawkers and leave the pavements to pedestrians," he feels, stressing that illegal hawkers should not be allowed to proliferate but, between the 'hawking menace' and the city's parking problems, the latter's worse as it forces hawkers on to pavements.

The big picture

How did we come to this – a situation where hawkers and citizens' groups are in a perennial tug of war? What forced hawkers on to pavements and bylanes to the point where pedestrian movement became near-impossible? The answers are many, but one culprit stands out: poor planning.

The concept of separate zones or city squares may not work since ours is a street culture, says architect and author Sarayu Ahuja. She points to Nariman Point (NP) as an example. It didn't strike planners that much of the workforce in a business district would want cheap food. "That's when hawkers came. If there's demand but no supply, it'll be like ants to a sugar hill. You can't stop it or wish these things away," she says.

NP being a veritable ghost town after work hours also made people view it as unsafe. The same mistake, Ahuja adds, was repeated with Bandra-Kurla Complex. Its relatively-poor accessibility by public transport and lifelessness at night makes it another no-go not just for pedestrians, but hawkers too.

"The informal sector is an integral part of the economy and has to be structurally integrated into city planning," says urban planner, architect and activist PK Das. "It's a nuisance when planners fail to comprehensively take this into account. So we're dealing with congestion and subsequent eviction or displacement of vendors."

Adding to the collective woes is the murky Licence Raj. Of the estimated 2.5 lakh hawkers in Mumbai, only around 15,000 are licensed. Then there's the unspoken and age-old rule of hafta and pauti (illegal vendors paying the BMC to clear garbage from their 'workspace'). "As per the TISS-YUVA survey, Rs 285 crores is given annually to cops and municipal officials as bribes. This was almost 20 years ago. Can you imagine how much it must be today?" asks Sharit Bhowmik.

Remedial measures

What took four years for the BMC to create – then trash – is now expected to be madeover in four months. Chances are the new DP, expected in four months, won't propose anything radical to better the hawker situation. But if there's anything people on both sides of the debate agree on, it's decentralising decision-making. "Mumbai needs TVCs in every ward to oversee the interests of that area. Officials sitting in town won't understand the hyper-local needs of people in suburbs and vice versa," says Milind Mhaske.

Das agrees: "We have to talk about how municipal corporations can be better managed. Planning has to be participatory and democratic. Otherwise people across all sections and economies won't be accommodated in the DP."

Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore are often touted as model cities for their open air hawker complexes that bridge the gap between vendors' and pedestrians' rights. Maybe we can learn something from Singapore in particular, says Sarayu Ahuja. "Singapore was once more or less in the situation we're in today. Hawkers were first taken away from commercial districts and tucked away in back lanes. When that didn't work, they were moved into residential areas. That also failed. Finally, they built hawker complexes. Incentives such as hygienic surroundings, gas, low rent and water were given to vendors," she elaborates. It was a model that worked wonders – of course, with serious planning and execution.

But Sharit Bhowmik doesn't think such plazas would be feasible for Mumbai. Citing the example of the flopped Dadar Hawking Plaza (the brainchild of former Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi), he asks: "Who'll go to the 10th or even third floor to buy something? In the case of the Dadar plaza, hawkers were saying they didn't even have place to store goods."

Instead, he proposes using existing structures, such as barely-used skywalks, as hawking zones. Moving some hawkers from stations to these structures can have a twofold advantage, Bhowmik feels. Firstly, the likelihood of people actually using the skywalks may increase. And second, stations will be decongested as a result, allowing for better movement of public transport.

To sum up: maybe it's time we got our basics – good roads, equal representation in city plans and uniform execution of laws and guidelines – right before dreaming of an India with 'smart cities'.