Context: A decade has passed since the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act came into effect on May 1, 2014, marking a significant milestone after nearly four decades of legal jurisprudence and the tireless efforts of street vendor movements across India.
Importance of street vendors:
Street vendors estimated to constitute 2.5% of any city’s population, play multifaceted roles in city life:
- Affordability: The vendors make city life affordable for others by providing vital links in the food, nutrition, and goods distribution chain at reasonable prices.
- Employment generation: They offer many migrants and the urban poor a source of modest yet consistent income.
- Preserving local culture: They are an integral part of the local culture and identity. Food vendors helps preserve traditional recipes and cooking methods e.g.: vada pav
- Provider of daily services: They are essential components of daily life by providing vital services that support the local economy as well as nutritional needs of the population.
Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act:
- It aimed to ‘protect’ and ‘regulate’ street vending in cities, with State-level rules and schemes, and execution by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) through by-laws, planning, and regulation.
- It delineates the roles and responsibilities of both vendors and various levels of government.
- It establishes a participatory governance structure through Town Vending Committees (TVCs) and mandates that street vendor representatives must constitute 40% of TVC members, with a sub-representation of 33% of women street vendors.
- These committees are tasked with ensuring the inclusion of all existing vendors in vending zones.
- It outlines mechanisms for addressing grievances and disputes, proposing the establishment of a Grievance Redressal Committee chaired by a civil judge or judicial magistrate.
- It recommends that the number of street vendors be limited to 2.5 percent of the population of the ward, zone, town or city.
- It recognises the positive urban role of vendors and the need for livelihood protection. It commits to accommodating all ‘existing’ vendors in vending zones and issuing vending certificates.
Challenges in its implementation:
- At the administrative level: There has been a noticeable increase in harassment and evictions of street vendors, due to an outdated bureaucratic mindset that views vendors as illegal entities to be cleared.
- There is also a pervasive lack of awareness and sensitisation about the Act among state authorities, the wider public, and vendors themselves.
- TVCs often remain under the control of local city authorities, with limited influence from street vendor representatives. And the representation of women vendors in TVCs is mostly tokenistic.
- At the governance level: Existing urban governance mechanisms are often weak. The Act does not integrate well with the framework established by the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act for urban governance.
- ULBs lack sufficient powers and capacities. Schemes like the Smart Cities Mission, laden with resources and pushed through as policy priorities from the top-down, mostly focus on infrastructure development and ignore the provisions of the Act for the inclusion of street vendors in city planning.
- At the societal level: The prevailing image of the ‘world class city tends to be exclusionary. It marginalises and stigmatises street vendors as obstacles to urban development instead of acknowledging them as legitimate contributors to the urban economy.
- These challenges are reflected in city designs, urban policies, and public perceptions of neighbourhoods.
Way forward:
- Progressive legislation: The Street Vendors Act is progressive and detailed, but its effective implementation requires initial top-down direction from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, eventually transitioning to a more decentralized approach.
- Decentralization needed: For the Act to be effectively implemented, it is crucial to decentralize the management and enhance the capacities of ULBs to plan for street vending in cities, and move away from high-handed department-led actions to actual deliberative processes at the TVC level.
- Integration into urban planning: Urban schemes, city planning guidelines, and policies should be amended to explicitly include and support street vending.
- Addressing new challenges:
- Climate Change: Consider the impact of climate change on the working conditions and sustainability of street vending.
- Increase in vendor numbers: Manage and support the growing number of street vendors.
- E-commerce competition: Address competitive pressures from online markets.
- Reduced incomes: Find innovative solutions to help vendors boost or stabilize their earnings.
- Removing the ceiling in the number of vendors: The Act recommends that the number of street vendors be limited to 2.5 percent of the population of the ward, zone, town or city. Because in large and heavily populated cities like Mumbai and Delhi, which are centres of economic activity, the ceiling is grossly inadequate, the report urges the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to explore the possibility of revisiting this ceiling.
The sub-component on street vendors in the National Urban Livelihood Mission needs to take cognizance of the changed realities and facilitate innovative measures for addressing needs. PM SVANidhi, a micro-credit facility for street vendors, has been a positive example in that direction.