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The state declares war on street-vendors
October 2001: The municipal and police laws are heavily loaded against people working in the informal sector. On the face of it these laws appear to bestow powers on the police and municipal authorities to promote civic order. But in actual fact, arbitrary powers vested in the hands of municipal officials, police and other related departments have enabled them to establish a vast extortion racket. The figures speak for themselves. Out of over five lakh vendors in the city of Delhi, only a handful have been issued tehbazaris. In the NDMC area, only 778 persons have been granted this legal status while in the MCD zones, till date this precious document has not been bestowed even on all of the 4,128 persons who, according to an absurd yet stringent criteria used by the government, were supposed to have qualified for getting a tebazari. Thus, lakhs of the vendors are doomed to remain illegal encroachers. The authorities know that declaring the vendors illegal will not make them disappear, in part because there is a massive demand for their services. Moreover, as the hawkers have no other means of livelihood, they too have no option but to carry on with their trade, even if it means facing police beatings and harassment by municipal staff, who have a vested interest in keeping the vendors insecure and grovelling. They use the illegal status of the vendors to fleece them of a good part of their earnings. If any one of them resists paying, that person is beaten out of the market. In order to keep them frightened as a collectivity, municipal authorities and the police carry out frequent raids in the informal 'natural' markets created by these hawkers and vendors. In the guise of removing illegal encroachments, they seize their goods and rehdis (push carts) and lock up all the confiscated property in municipal yards. Even those who have licensed stalls are not spared. Their stalls and wares are likewise destroyed or confiscated. They are then expected to pay hefty fines to get their push-carts and goods released. The going rate of penalty is Rs. 1,450 plus Rs. 300 as 'removal charges' and Rs. 100 per day as store charges for the number of days their rehdis stay in municipal yards. Thus a vendor has to spend a minimum of Rs. 1,900 to get his rehdi released from the municipality, that is if it is released the very next day. Often the vendors can't pay the exorbitant fines and bribes demanded of them for releasing their goods. So they have to start from scratch again. There are times when entire markets are demolished. It takes them at least a few weeks or even months to resume work by arriving at a new settlement with the police, municipal employees and local corporators, who are often complicit partners in this extortion racket. Most of these raids are meant to terrorise them into paying ever escalating bribes demanded of them. Madhu Kishwar
October 2001