Implementing the Street Vendors Act
- A decade has passed since the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act came into effect on May 1, 2014.
- It marks a significant milestone after nearly four decades of legal jurisprudence and the tireless efforts of street vendor movements across India.
Provisions of the law
- Street vendors, estimated to constitute 2.5% of any city’s population, play multifaceted roles in city life.
- The Act clearly delineates the roles and responsibilities of both vendors and various levels of government.
- It recognises the positive urban role of vendors and the need for livelihood protection.
- It commits to accommodating all ‘existing’ vendors in vending zones and issuing vending certificates.
- The Act establishes a participatory governance structure through Town Vending Committees (TVCs)
- Additionally, the Act outlines mechanisms for addressing grievances and disputes, proposing the establishment of a Grievance Redressal Committee chaired by a civil judge or judicial magistrate.
Three broad challenges
- However, the Act has faced three broad challenges. First, at the administrative level,
- There has been a noticeable increase in harassment and evictions of street vendors, despite the Act’s emphasis on their protection and regulation.
- This is often due to an outdated bureaucratic mindset that views vendors as illegal entities to be cleared.
- There is also a pervasive lack of awareness and sensitisation about the Act among state authorities, the wider public, and vendors themselves.
- Second, at the governance level, existing urban governance mechanisms are often weak.
- The Act does not integrate well with the framework established by the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act for urban governance.
- ULBs lack sufficient powers and capacities, Schemes like the Smart Cities Mission, laden with resources and pushed through as policy priorities from the top-down
- mostly focus on infrastructure development and ignore the provisions of the Act for the inclusion of street vendors in city planning.
- Third, at the societal level, the prevailing image of the ‘world class city tends to be exclusionary.
- It marginalises and stigmatises street vendors as obstacles to urban development instead of acknowledging them as legitimate contributors to the urban economy.
The way forward
- PM SVANidhi, a micro-credit facility for street vendors, has been a positive example in that direction.
- There is a strong need to decentralise interventions, enhance the capacities of ULBs to plan for street vending in cities, and move away from high-handed department-led actions to actual deliberative processes at the TVC level.
- The Act now faces new challenges such as the impact of climate change on vendors, a surge in the number of vendors, competition from e-commerce, and reduced incomes.
- The Act’s broad welfare provisions must be used creatively to meet the emerging needs of street vendors.
- The sub-component on street vendors in the National Urban Livelihood Mission needs to take cognisance of the changed realities and facilitate innovative measures for addressing needs.
- The case of the Street Vendors Act highlights the complex interplay of contestation over space, workers in urban areas, and governance, offering valuable lessons for future lawmaking and implementation.