Pedestrian safety drive running roughshod over street vendors’ rights? Premium

A recent drive by the Bengaluru police and civic body to rid pavements of encroachments by street vendors has sparked a larger debate on their rights under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 201

“I had been selling vegetables by the roadside for years. But recently, civic officials and police evicted me, saying I can no longer sell on the footpath. I don’t know where to go. How do I make a living? I don’t know any other trade apart from this,” said Shantamma, a street vendor in K.R. Puram in her fifties. She has found a new spot on another street but remains constantly afraid of being evicted from there too.

Like her, hundreds of street vendors have been evicted across the city over the past few weeks as part of a special drive taken up by Bengaluru’s civic body and traffic police to clear footpaths of all “encroachments” to make way for pedestrians and prevent them from jaywalking. The drive was triggered by an increasing number of pedestrian deaths in accidents on the city’s streets. 

While 164 and 161 pedestrians were killed in road accidents in the city in 2020 and 2021, respectively, the death toll of pedestrians shot up to 247 in 2022. Alok Kumar, Commissioner, Traffic and Road Safety, devised a holistic plan to not only reduce pedestrian deaths but also free footpaths and improve them. Lack of walkable footpaths forced pedestrians to use the roadway, increasing pedestrian deaths, police said. A study of the cause of pedestrian fatalities indicates that of the 247, as many as 62 people were killed while walking by the side of the road, suggesting this may be because of a lack of walkable footpaths on these streets.

M.N. Anucheth, Joint Commissioner (Traffic), said the “Reclaim Footpaths” drive was taken up by all traffic police stations in their respective jurisdictions in collaboration with the civic body. “While we are focusing on removing parked vehicles, encroachments by shops and eateries on footpaths, apart from other encroachments, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has taken up a drive to remove street vendors from main roads,” he explained.

BBMP launched the drive from the Yelahanka zone, and now all zonal joint commissioners are leading the special drive to clear footpaths on main roads, including street vendors. “We are focusing more on permanent and semi-permanent structures that many street vendors have put up on footpaths,” a senior civic official said.

While pedestrian safety may have triggered the special drive, it is now also part of the more extensive “Brand Bengaluru” campaign spearheaded by Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar.

“Slowly, the campaign is taking on elitist underpinnings and acquiring a tone of “beautification” of the city without solving the basic problems first. But the government should not lose its way and start catering to the middle-class view of a city. Then the poor, like street vendors, will likely face the brunt of it. We have seen this happen in Gandhi Bazaar in South Bengaluru, where street vendors are part of its identity and charm,” said N.S. Mukunda, of Bengaluru Praja Vedike, a forum of citizens.