Hawkers along the streets: Problem or convinience?
TITLE OF THE PROJECT:-
Hawkers along the streets: Problem or convenience?
INTRODUCTION/HISTORY:-
Across Indian cities, the middle class appears to be rising against a group which could also be seen as innocuous, commonplace and convenient – the street hawker, or someone who vends their goods in a peripatetic manner. It could be an old woman at a street corner with a basket of vegetables or a man selling peanuts or even a more enterprising salesman who has appropriated a pavement with bamboo and plastic to sell his knockoffs of knockoffs of knockoffs.
But as the middle classes have grown in India and economic prosperity has changed their mobility and their shopping habits, the hawker has become an impediment. He uses up precious space, is messy, sometimes aggressive and adds little beauty to the surroundings. As residents’ associations become more powerful, there is pressure on local municipal offices to tackle what newspapers call – with no qualms – “the hawker menace”.
Here is what the Supreme Court of India had to say about the “hawker menace”: “Considering that an alarming percentage of population in our country lives below the poverty line and when citizens by gathering meager resources try to employ themselves as hawkers and street traders, they cannot be subjected to a deprivation on the pretext that they have no right.”
OBSERVATION:-
Mumbai, which has the highest concentration of hawkers in the country, also has the dubious distinction of being a city with the highest debt among street vendors and no formal institutional credit provider, a study by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has found. The study on financial inclusion and street vendors, conducted across 15 cities, shows borrowed amounts were highest in Mumbai, Patna and Ranchi, forcing them into multiple debt traps.
There are nearly 2.5 lakh hawkers across Mumbai and BMC has asked TISS to conduct a study on their rehabilitation. The study concludes that as far as government initiatives
Hawkers along the streets: Problem or convenience?
INTRODUCTION/HISTORY:-
Across Indian cities, the middle class appears to be rising against a group which could also be seen as innocuous, commonplace and convenient – the street hawker, or someone who vends their goods in a peripatetic manner. It could be an old woman at a street corner with a basket of vegetables or a man selling peanuts or even a more enterprising salesman who has appropriated a pavement with bamboo and plastic to sell his knockoffs of knockoffs of knockoffs.
But as the middle classes have grown in India and economic prosperity has changed their mobility and their shopping habits, the hawker has become an impediment. He uses up precious space, is messy, sometimes aggressive and adds little beauty to the surroundings. As residents’ associations become more powerful, there is pressure on local municipal offices to tackle what newspapers call – with no qualms – “the hawker menace”.
Here is what the Supreme Court of India had to say about the “hawker menace”: “Considering that an alarming percentage of population in our country lives below the poverty line and when citizens by gathering meager resources try to employ themselves as hawkers and street traders, they cannot be subjected to a deprivation on the pretext that they have no right.”
OBSERVATION:-
Mumbai, which has the highest concentration of hawkers in the country, also has the dubious distinction of being a city with the highest debt among street vendors and no formal institutional credit provider, a study by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has found. The study on financial inclusion and street vendors, conducted across 15 cities, shows borrowed amounts were highest in Mumbai, Patna and Ranchi, forcing them into multiple debt traps.
There are nearly 2.5 lakh hawkers across Mumbai and BMC has asked TISS to conduct a study on their rehabilitation. The study concludes that as far as government initiatives