THEY HAVE BEEN providing various services to the urban poor, marginalized, middle-class and lower middle-class population through the decades. They are not only a retail outlet for the above mentioned urban population, but also a social outlet. They not only share a client and customer relation but they also share their feelings and thoughts. Hawkers are also the main reason for existence of thousands of small-scale and home based FMCG, food production and other industries as they are the only selling source for these industries. Thus, hawkers also play a very important role in the urban economy.

 

A study reveals that total turnover of the hawkers of Mumbai is 12,000 cores Delhi 10,000 cores and Kolkata Rs. 8,772 cores. Hawkers sell 75 per cent of the vegetables in urban Indian vegetable market because there is a huge crisis in organized Municipal Markets. Tea hawkers in every nukkar (small crossings) in urban India are also strong social outlets for the poor and middle class population. In the evenings people assemble and share their views, thoughts and stories with a cup of tea and biscuits which cost Rs.5/- but if the hawkers are not there then they would have to pay Rs 50-150/- for the same reason in any café. A study on the food hawkers of India conducted by All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health highlighted that the food hawkers provide 1000 kilocalories food value in just Rs. 7/-. The food hawkers of India sell more then 200 types of food items that provide a vast variety of choice to the urban poor population.

 

So, the social, cultural and economical bond between the hawkers and their customers can easily be understood. In present super fast urban life of today they are social and cultural outlets for a large urban population. So they cannot be just thrown away from the urban infrastructure rather they should be regulated and then included in the fast changing urban scenario.

 

As the conflict with the law has increased the hawkers have also started to organize. When neo-liberal developmental agenda is at its peak all the urban areas are being beautified by removal of urban poor people. So the urban authorities decided to immediately evict them and many operations were started around the nation and the worst and biggest among them is “Operation Sunshine” which took place at Kolkata. In one single night more then 3000 hawkers were evicted and within the operation period more then 1 lakh hawkers were evicted.

 

A federation of all the major and minor hawkers unions named “Hawker Sangram Committee” accepted the challenge and waged the battle for survival against the West Bengal Government and Calcutta Municipal Corporation. Ultimately the HSC was successful in their resistance struggle in the court and forced the government to back off, though in the meantime 18 hawkers committed suicide. Hawker Sangram committee fermented the formation of National Hawkers Federation (NHF) in May 2001.

 

It is a federation of all hawker associations who are fighting against the eviction throughout the country. Now it has 550 independent unions affiliated with 11 Central Trade Unions and non-affiliated unions of the country. NHF has 11.25 lakh memberships as on date. It is one of the largest federations in India. One of the remarkable achievements of NHF is to compel the Central Government to adopt one national policy for hawkers.

 

NHF also played a pivotal role in forming the International Federation of Hawkers and of other sections of urban poor. Recently, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation declared to give legal licenses to all the hawkers. The West Bengal Government and Kolkata Municipal Corporation started the Policy Implementation Process and a central Committee called “APEX COMMITTEE” was formulated with representation of Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Police Commissioner of Kolkata, three MLCs of Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the representatives of Hawker Union, Association, Federation, Organization.

 

Several meetings of the Committee were held, regulations were made and the ward or borough based vending committee formulation process is in progress. In the national scenario the same success story reflected as the Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Elevation had formulated a policy in 2004 under the name of ‘National Policy on Urban Street Vendors’. It reveals that the government has lately realized that hawking is not a mere act of earning an income – it serves the countless urban poor in getting their daily needs and services within their means. Even the Supreme Court has remarked that the hawkers provide the general mass of the people with the commodities of daily use at a reasonable price and provide the small-scale and home-based industries a platform for survival. Ceaseless struggle for existence has earned the hawkers social and economic recognition.

 

The formulation of the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors offers an opportunity to hawkers to carry on their trade legally. Expansion of urban areas and allied development of the towns, cities and mega-cities and their consequent effect on the hawkers give rise to few questions – where they will go? What will be their future? what will be the nature and norm of their livelihood? There are many hurdles on the way of implementation of the policy as the age-old criminal procedure codes of the British regime are still operative in our country and the laws, rules and regulations of the police as well as those of the civic-body administration have not been updated. Each of the governments at state level will have to play a vital role to enact and enforce the said national policy effectively. Presently in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata this policy is in the implementation process.