The Hindu : Tale of woes of pavement vendors

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 13, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Tale of woes of pavement vendors

By Karthik Subramanian

CHENNAI NOV. 12. A sliver of the road enough to spread a gunny bag - that's all Padmavati wants.

But there is a threat to the very space that the hawker of Madhavaram High Road had taken for granted as her own over the last two decades. In the last couple of months, Padmavati and other hawkers say the police have kept them on tenterhooks each day with continual `raids'.

They narrate a pattern: In the mornings, a police patrol party, reportedly from local K-1 police station, arrives at the stretch between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. The team then forcibly removes their goods, invariably amid heated arguments. There is also the odd instance of force being used.

"A month ago, two of the hawkers were beaten-up. We do not understand why the police have become so stern all of a sudden", a vendor wondered.

Most of the hawkers claimed that they belonged to the second generation of vendors of Madhavaram High Road and were an intrinsic part of the local market.

A few vendors who come there from far away places, like Gumidipoondi, to eke out a livelihood say they have no other place to go. Most of them purchase goods on the `thandal' loans that they get on exorbitant interest rates and are left in the lurch on days when their goods get confiscated. "It hardly makes sense to pay a penalty to get our goods back," a hawker selling lemons said.

The locality does not have any market of Chennai Corporation, where they could be relocated. "The Chennai Corporation passed resolutions on two occasions - in 1971 and in 1998 - to construct a market complex near Perambur Gandhi Park. The proposal never materialised", points out K. Senthil Kumar, who heads the Perambur Gandhi Park Small Vendors Association.

Some hawkers, however, did not discount the hand of a new supermarket, which had been established near their market place, in the raids.

Despite attempts, the police officers, who conducted the raids on Tuesday and Wednesday (seen in the photo) could not be reached for comments. The local residents and road-users see the raids as a possible means to ease the traffic flow in the stretch.

The plight of pavement vendors has been highlighted by NGOs including Pennurimai Iyakkam, which insists that the hawkers should not be evicted until alternative arrangements are made for them.

The Hawking Committee, headed by J. Kanagaraj, a retired judge of the Madras High Court, has already submitted its proposal to the court.

The NGOs have appealed to civic authorities as well as to the police against evicting vendors not obstructing traffic until the court passed its final orders on Committee'srecommendations.

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