Hawkers or Street Vendors are an integral part of World urban society and economy and Indian Civilization from time immemorial and with the development and growth of Urban Civilization, the conflict with Law and Order & Authority has increased and as a result they became an illegal entity in cotemporary India. Hawkers or Street Vendors are not only a Self-Employed Urban Poor Community but they are an essential part of the urban existence. They are providing various services to the total urban poor, marginalized, middle-class & lower middle-class Population through out the decades. They are the only retail outlet for the above mentioned urban population, they are also a social outlets of those thousand of peoples and not only they 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 & home based FMCG, Food Production & 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, Kolkata Rs. 8,772 Cores Hawkers sell 75% of the Vegetables in Urban Indian vegetable market because there is a huge crisis in organized Municipal Market. Tea Hawkers in every Nukkar (small crossings) in the urban India is also a strong social out let for the poor and middle class population, in every evening lot’s of peoples assembles and share their different views, thoughts and stories with a cup of tea and a biscuits which cost Rs.5/- but if the hawkers are not there then they 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 provides 1000 kilocalories food value in just Rs. 7/-. The food hawkers of India sale more then 200 types of food items which provides a vast variety of choice to the urban poor population. So as we can easily understand the social, cultural and economical bond between the hawkers and their customers. In present super fast urban life they are social & cultural Outlet for a large urban population. So they can not be just thrown away from the urban infrastructure rather they should be regulated and then included in the urban infrastructure. As the conflict with the Law has increased the hawkers also started to organize. When neo-liberal developmental agenda is in its peak all the urban areas being beautified by removal of urban poor peoples living in the urban area. 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 a night more then 3000 hawkers were evicted and with in the operation period more then 1 lakh hawkers were evicted. At that time, 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. Hawker Sangram Committee is a network of all major Hawker’s Union in Kolkata megapolice, built up 10 years ago in the midst of a struggle of all the Hawkers to resist the nefarious attempt of the Government to evict them from the pavement in the name of ‘operation sunshine’. Ultimately the HSC was successful in their resistance struggle in the road and in the court and forced the government to take such a drastic decision, 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 on Hawkers. NHF also played a pivot role in forming the International Federation of Hawkers and of other sections of urban poor. Presently 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 till date a central Committee called “APEX COMMITTEE” was formulated with representation of Mayor or Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Police Commissioner of Kolkata Police, three MICs of Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the Hawker Union, Association, Federation, Organization. Several meetings of the Committee was held regulations was 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 and style of ‘National Policy on Urban Street Vendors’. It reveals that the government has lately realized that hawking is not a mere act of fetching 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 providing the Small-Scale & 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 there 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 such as the age-old criminal procedure codes of the British regime is still operative in our country and the laws and, rules and regulations of the police as well as those of the civic-body administration. Each of the governments at state level will have to play a vital role to enact and enforce the said National Policy effectively. The State Governments should make action plan and every arrangement to implement the policies. Presently in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata this policy is in implementation process. So till now it seems to be a success paradigm and existence of hawkers are secured. But unfortunately this policy and the so called “Pro-Hawker” by the authorities or by the governments are only appease and to keep them silent and aloof from the reality. The neo-liberal attacks are coming from all the ways. Firstly, The ADB sponsored and USAID designed Jawaharlal Urban Renewal Mission which is targeted to remove the Urban Poor Dwellers from the Hi-Tech Urban area. As the necessary conditions of the mission includes Water-Tax, Removal of Urban Land Ceiling Act, Drainage & Sewerage Tax, Removal of Thika-Tenancy Act, Removal of Rent-Control Act, Removal of “Basti’s” or Slums are necessary for converting it to a high-cost Multi-stored Buildings whose maintenance cost is above the basic earning of the Slum-Dwellers and other massive Urban infrastructural adjustments. In every case hawkers are the direct and most effected group because they belong to the urban poor community as they live in the slums, if water is to be taxed then they will face a huge increase in their production cost as the food hawkers required minimum 100 liters water per day. Drainage & sewerage tax will also effect in their economic life. in the urban renewal mission the total city planning process will be changed previously at the time of City Master Planning there was option for Public Hearing but now the CDP (City Development Planning) will be done by the ADB representatives and bureaucrats there will be no place for Public Hearing. Therefore, Hawkers along with all the other urban poor working communities could be easily wiped out from the urban scenario. So the democratization of the urban city planning will come to its end. From now the International Financial Institutions appointed officers will design and plan our cities where the poor people have no place. Secondly, Foreign Direct Investment in Retail. With growth of Shopping Malls the hawkers will be directly affected. In the recent past 5 years a huge number of Super Malls are built and now as the FDI is also provided Green Signal for retail , the large gigantic multi-national like Wal-Mart, Metro, Spencers, MacDonald, KFC, ITC, Reliance, TATA all are in pipelined to hijack Indian Retail Market which is the traditional market of Hawkers for thousands of years . as result of this they now are verge of death along with their License because their consumers now enjoys shopping in Ac markets where they get from vegetables to Car along with double or triple free complementary gift at every purchases and good looking in a very cheaper rate then the hawkers. The Food Corporates have already started to capture food hawkers market by Tiffin or lunch for the office goers will be delivered to their offices along with complementary Coca-cola packages just for Rs.20/- (MacDonald offering in some Metropolis). So very soon hawkers will find no single customer and thus, they would be forced to move to their villages. Where awaits for them another displacement for industrialization, SEZs or STZs. Next the Food Safety & Standers Act 2006, which says that the food hawkers have to maintain the same safety & standard measures like a Five-Star Hotel or Resort other wise a food hawker would be fined up to Rs. 5 Lakhs or imprisoned for 1 year or both. All the food hawkers bound obtain a food safety license which is a formality for the Big Restaurants and its full of highly technical terms & conditions which can not be fulfilled by the hawkers. It is surprising to see that at the time of passing the bill in look-sabha none of our peoples representatives (pretended) raise any question regarding this crisis and it was passed with full majority consent. The Act is in the implementation stage. This will result in vaporization of food hawkers, this problem could be solved through a separate board or committee for the Hawkers or vendors in the Act but as the corporate food industry lobby’s intention is to kill food hawkers in the name of unhealthy & unhygienic. In kolkata from the year 1992 this initiative was started by All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health and the hawkers Unions to impart training to educate food hawkers how to use healthy and hygienic ways to processes, prepare and serve the food. In last two years, under the initiative of Hawker Sangram Committee and AIIH&PH 3000 food hawkers were trained. As a result of this endeavor four Model safety Food Hawking Zones were opened by those trained vendors which was inaugurated by the Health Minister Mr. Surjakanta Misra, representatives from WHO & FAO in the year of 2004. Thus the community based initiative which was present among the food hawkers was successful to secure the consumers health. But as the food corporate industry can not capture the food market in the presence of the Food Hawkers so the Food Safety and Standard Act was aimed to facilitate the food corporates and wipe out the food vendors. However, even after the achieving the “National Policy on Urban Street Vendors” which gives them a legal states and social security but l their existence is still facing a greater threat then the previous legal crisis. Therefore, the only way remains for the over 4 crors hawkers is to resist the attacks of Neo-Liberal and pro-Capitalist developmental paradigm other wise in the near future we have to see their artificial models in the National Museum.
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