Street Vendors' Rights

To:  Prime Minister of India

Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh

Hon'ble Lt. Governor of Delhi, Tejinder Khanna

Hon'ble Mayor of Delhi, Aarti Mehra


Subject: Urgent Need for Action to Secure Street Vendors' Rights


Vendors all over the country, including in Delhi, are facing increasing assaults and clearance operations under the dubious guise of beautification drives. Vendors in Gwalior, Patiala, Lucknow have immolated themselves outside their municipal offices in protest against clearance operations. On July 31st, 2007, eleven handicapped vendors of Varanasi consumed poison in protest against removal of their kiosks. Many more in towns and cities across India have died silent deaths due to malnutrition, hunger and disease since their livelihoods were destroyed by municipal agencies pretending to spruce up their cities by removing encroachments.

Denied vending licenses by government agencies, street vendors remain trapped in a web of illegality and vulnerability. Repeated clearance operations heighten their vulnerability, keeping vendors forever insecure, terrorized and willing to pay continuously higher bribes for carrying on with their trade. Street vendors in Delhi alone are robbed of at least Rs.500 crores every year by the extortionist mafias.

Manushi, a well known citizen’s organization, has been working with street vendors in Delhi for many years. Manushi has welcomed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) announcement that 300,000 vending licenses are to be issued by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in the next six months by way of implementing the promises made in the National Policy for Street Vendors. However, Manushi is very concerned that the MCD has not built in any safeguards to ensure that genuine vendors get these licenses.

The scheme devised for identifying beneficiaries has the making of a mammoth scam (click here for a more detailed list of some of the inherent flaws in the scheme). Without a reliable system of identifying genuine vendors, simply inviting applications will mean lakhs of bogus applications. The politically connected extortionist mafias who at present control the access to illegal vending sites and thereby extort at least Rs 500 crores every year in Delhi will ensure that their own relatives and associates are the ones who flood the Municipal Corporation with benami applications. Genuine vendors are likely to be left high and dry.

That is why Manushi has been advocating a comprehensive photo census of actual vendors and their locations by an independent and credible agency, as a first step towards identifying who is actually working on the streets so that extortionist mafias do not end up cornering bulk of vending licenses. Without this ground level information regarding the persons who are actually braving the elements to earn their livelihood from street trading, there is no reliable mechanism for eliminating bogus and benami claimants. The Supreme Court appointed committees headed by Justice Chopra and Justice Thareja had passed severe indictments on how mafia elements had made a total mockery of the Gainda Ram scheme of the Supreme Court under which applications had likewise been invited in the 1990’s.

Today, in Delhi vendors pay sums ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 20,000 towards rent of illegally occupied vending spots whose sale value runs into lakhs. Given the acute short supply of commercial spaces the mafia that controls illegal street vending is all set to grab hold of tehbazari licenses to legalize their control over vending sites through force and fraud.

It is worth recalling the fate of a small pilot project executed by Manushi at Sewa Nagar. The aim of this project was to demonstrate by concrete example how rejuvenation and beautification of our cities could go hand in hand with livelihood security for the urban self-employed poor, how street vendors can be accommodated in the city in a disciplined manner while enhancing municipal revenues. As Sewa Nagar became a disciplined, clean and aesthetic street market with each vendor contributing monthly rent of Rs 390 to the MCD instead of paying bribes, its commercial value shot up and the mafia used sheer goonda power to grab hold of vendor stalls.

What was developed as a model for new hawking zones to be created all over India has now been taken over by criminal mafia elements of the area. Today, Manushi members who are involved in the Sewa Nagar project are facing life-threatening attacks. Manushi’s most active members have been brutally beaten up and driven out of the area. The local police have failed to bring the mafia elements under check while the extortionist mafias are trying to implicate Manushi in fraudulent criminal cases. (Click here for more details of the endangered Sewa Nagar Project)

The same story will be repeated all over Delhi, and across India, if we do not build effective safeguards to keep the tehbazari mafia at bay and ensure that genuine vendors are identified and given licenses through an efficient and transparent system of the kind proposed by Manushi.

That is why we are pressing for a more transparent, honest and efficient system and demanding that:

1. An empowered Task Force headed by the Hon’ble Mayor or the Lt. Governor of Delhi should be set up to institutionalize a rational, honest and accountable system for legalizing the status of street vendors and to prevent extortionist mafias and vested interests from capturing vending spots in hawking zones.

2. A citywide photo census should be carried out as a first essential step to identify those who are actually operating on the streets, their exact location as well as the total number of street vendors actually operating in Delhi as a first step towards determining who qualifies to get tehbazari.

3. All necessary steps should be taken to save the Sewa Nagar Pilot Project for street vendors from forcible takeover by criminal elements by appropriate punitive action against them.

The manner in which the National Policy for Street Vendors is implemented has implications that go far beyond even the right to livelihood of the many lakhs of street vendors in India. When vulnerable citizens see the police join hands with extortionist mafias, they lose respect for laws and law enforcers leading to greater crime in society. Today all our markets are in control of criminals with political links. They don’t stop at preying on the poor. The growing political clout and money power at the disposal of criminals renders every one unsafe, no matter how many security guards they position outside their homes. Safety is indivisible. If criminal mafias control and dominate every bazaar and every market, none of us can remain safe.

We sincerely hope you will respond with concrete positive measures to our demands and proposals for reform.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Street Vendors' Rights Petition to Prime Minister of India was created by and written by Siddhartha Shome (sid.shome@yahoo.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.