Opinion - Editorials   

A coordinated policy needed

After six years of campaign and persuasion, the Government of India published its first National Policy on Urban Street Vendors in 2004. Even before that policy could be fully tested, a new policy has been unveiled by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. Despite providing a multitude of affordable services to the city, street vending unfortunately remains “an uncertain form of entrepreneurship.” Street vendors’ earnings are low, and they are placed marginally above casual workers. Frequent eviction from the streets and confiscation of goods add to their woes. Both policies avow to provide a supportive environment for the vendors to earn their livelihood and have some common features such as registering vendors by issuing photo identification cards and promoting the Town Vending Committee (TVC) to regulate their activities. The new policy is an improvement over the old in that it insists that the State government and the local bodies must spell out the spatial norms and include them in the city master plans. It has made a commendable attempt to increase the number of street vendors as members of the TVC. However, a mere tinkering with policy is not quite enough.

So far, only a handful of States have attempted to adopt the earlier policy and in many cities even the first step of registering street vendors has not been taken. Some of the cities, as the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector report (2007) points out, have concerned themselves only with demarcating the no-hawking areas, but have not done much about hawking areas. All these anomalies clearly indicate that a speedy implementation of a transparent, participatory, and rational street vending plan is what is urgently required. Urban planning and governance are State subjects and planning for the street vendors is the responsibility of the local body. However, in the case of urban renewal, promoted through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the Government of India has demonstrated that it can constructively influence State policies and city-level projects. By offering conditional financial incentives, the Centre has helped introduce the much-needed municipal reforms. A similar approach of active involvement, assistance, and innovative coordination with the State governments is required in planning for the street vendors. For the policy to succeed, it has to be coordinated with transportation and urban development measures that promote pedestrian-friendly cities that will sustain street vending.

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