Karnataka elections: Nothing more important than vending zones for street vendors

According to estimates, there are around 1.5 lakh street vendors in Bengaluru and yet, for this sector, their long-standing demand, to provide dedicated vending zones, has not been implemented and they are hoping that their demands will be heeded to by political parties during the May 10 Karnataka Assembly elections  

Despite the emergence of malls and supermarkets, street vendors and hawkers are still an integral part of the city life, thanks to their presence in every locality and their affordable prices. According to estimates, there are around 1.5 lakh street vendors in Bengaluru and yet, for this sector, their long-standing demand, to provide dedicated vending zones, has not been implemented. 

The life of a street vendor on the city’s streets continues to be precarious. Despite The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, that provides security for them to conduct their trade, they continue to be subjected to arbitrary evictions by civic and traffic police officials often.

“If we have to conduct our business on the street, we have to bribe everyone starting from the beat constable, civic official to followers of councillors and MLAs. This can be avoided only if we are given an ID card by the civic body and permanent vending zones identified and allotted for us,” Basavaraj, a vendor in Vijayanagar market. 

Implementing the Street Vendors Act, 2014, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) conducted a survey in 2017. “It was so shoddy that it identified only 26,000 street vendors as against an estimated 1.5 lakh. Of them, only 20,000 have been given ID cards,” said Vinay Sreenivasa, an activist with the Beedi Badi Vyaparigala Sanghatane. 

This has affected the street vendors in many ways. For instance, the Union government has implemented the Pradhan Mantri Street Vendors Atma Nirbhar Nidhi (PMSVANidhi), under which street vendors can avail a loan of ₹10,000, a scheme the BJP is milking to reach out to the community. However, only identified street vendors with ID cards can avail the benefit of the scheme, keeping out most of the street vendors of the city. 

The city has failed to meet the targets set by the Centre for the scheme due to the shoddy survey in the city. As against a target of 80,000 beneficiaries in 2022, the city only has 26,000 identified street vendors. The Act stipulates that such a survey should be taken up every five years. In 2022, Chief Civic Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath told The Hindu that a new survey would be taken up, but it hasn’t been done till date. Though the BBMP called a tender for the survey, it did not see many participants and has failed to take off. 

“The civic body has to form town vending committees which have to meet every three months to demarcate vending zones. In two of the eight zones of the city, the committees have only not been formed and even in those zones where committees have been formed, vending zones haven’t been demarcated. To all this, a survey bringing all street vendors into the net is key. The government that will come to power now has to treat this as a pressing issue and implement the provisions of the Street Vendors Act, 2014 in full letter and spirit,” said S. Babu, president of Bengaluru Urban District Street Vendors’ Federation.