Rulers of Footpath

In recent years, the subject of hawkers (street vendors) conquering public space of the pavements, which should “rightfully” belong to pedestrians alone, has invited much controversy. Each city has its own histories of street vending and own ways of carrying it through a combination of crackdown resettlement and negotiation.In Kolkata, hawking is a routine phenomenon and hawkers symbolize one of the largest, more organised, and perhaps, more militant sectors within the informal economy. Let us look into the management of the pavement hawking in a political angle in the city since independence of India.

In the 1950s, the usual way to check encroachment was to convert previous stables and wayside vacant public lands into “hawkers’ corners”. Thus, in 1955, Bidhan Roy gave permission to build a hawkers’ corner adjacent to the “Jogubabu Bazar” and the residence of Sir Asutosh Mukherjee, in Bhawanipore region. The large stable opposite the Greek Orthodox Church in Russa Road (now Syamaprosad Mukherjee Street) was very soon converted into “Kalighat Refugee Hawkers’Corner”.

In 1952, the then Chief Minister Bidhan Roy tried to evict the book-hawkers along College Street so that the outstanding colonial architecture of Presidency College and the University of Calcutta could be visible from a distance. In order to keep a constant flow of books at a cheap price available, the teachers of Presidency College requested the chief minister not to evict the book-hawkers. The stalls flourished under middle class backing.

Eviction of the hawkers became a routine act for the corporation during the 1960s with the coming of fresh refugees from East Pakistan. Immediately after the death of Roy, an eviction drive took place in the Esplanade Tram Depot. But the evicted hawkers were soon rehabilitated near the location they had occupied. The new rehabilitation market was named after Bidhan Roy (Bidhan Market). As this drive was backed by a sound rehabilitation scheme, it did not provoke much disturbance in the city.

In 1969, during the short tenure of the United Front government, Deputy Chief Minister JyotiBasu ordered the police to evict the hawkers at Gariahat region (the centre of the southern part of the city and a thriving retail upmarket at that time). But this drive did not materialise due to the intervention of Ballygunj Hawkers’ Union dominated by the Worker’s Party.

In 1972, the Congress government ventured to evict the hawkers occupying the pavements across the Chowringhee (now Jawaharlal Nehru Road). Again the mission proved to be a futile one.

During 1975, the corporation had nine retail markets in its ownership at that time. These markets were scattered in different pockets of the city. Revenue records of the municipal markets provide some clues. Account of thefinancial condition of all the municipal retail markets between 1965-66 and 1975-76, account shows that right from 1965-66 the profitability of the markets was declining,  from 1971-72, these markets began to face a revenue loss.The downward trend was equally visible in theCollege Street market (the second largest municipal market in the city). The situation of the small markets like that of Entally, Lansdowne, New Alipore and Allen was more precarious. Only the Gariahat market could earn a profit of Rs 1 lakh in 1975-76. Revenue losses of the markets were attributed to the “hawker menace”.The representatives of Calcutta Municipal Corporation (henceforth corporation), Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), and the public works department (PWD) jointly took a “decision” on the removal of the hawkers from the pavements of the city to give it back to the pedestrians. First phase of the proposed drive against encroachers covered Chittaranjan Avenue (from Madan Street Crossing to Lenin Sarani Junction), parts of Bentinck Street (from its crossing with R N Mukherjee Road to the junction of Lenin Sarani and Jawharlal Nehru Road), parts of Jawharlal Nehru Road from its crossing with the Lenin Sarani up to its crossing with Lindsay Street – and also certain portions of the Esplanade-East, from the crossing of Lenin Sarani to Old Court House Street. The geographic area that the first phase of Operation Hawkers involved corresponded to the bulk of the Central Business District of the city. The majority of the hawkers were non-Bengali Muslims. It was decided that a second or third phase of the “operation” would be undertaken in the Gariahat-Ballygunj, Sealdah and Shyambazaar regions, respectively, that had been the strongholds of the Bengali Hindu refugees.The “well-planned drive to clear roads and footpaths” was “successful” in theareas around the CBD skirting the wholesale area of Burrabazaar and in and around Esplanade. It is important to register the fact that the stalls located along the lanes inside Burrabazaar were left undisturbed. The unauthorised stalls in front of hospital walls as well as the stalls along Rashbehari Avenue, Shyambazaar and Sealdah were not destroyed flouting the earlier plan.It is very important to note here that Mr Subrata Mukherjee, presently Panchayat Raj & Rural Development Minister in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet, was minister in Sidharta Shankar Roy’s cabinet, 1972-1977.

Later, when the CPI(M) was firmly in saddle as leader of the Left Front for around two decades, it launched Operation Sunshine in 1996.Officers of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, cadres of the CPI(M) along with police battalions demolished the side walk stalls of thousands of hawkers. Such stalls had lined the city's thoroughfares for nearly three decades. This time the hawkers were mobilised by opposition leaders such as Mamata Banerjee but the Left Front remained firm in its conviction to remove hawkers. However, in the face of protests, the municipal administration and the police allowed the hawkers to reoccupy gradually the pavements of streets from which they had been cleared. The Calcutta Hawker Sangram Committee, a union of more than 32 local hawkers' associations formed in the before math of Operation Sunshine, took the leadership to reclaim the footpaths. The situation has come to such a pass that according to a deputy commissioner of Kolkata Police, 80 per cent of Kolkata's pavements were encroached by hawkers and illegal settlers. Pedestrians are forced to use the roads because there is hardly any space on the pavements for walking, and once people are getting used to walking on the streets, they continue to do so even if the sidewalks are vacant. Some reports suggest that the hawkers have made a comeback on the streets of Kolkata during the period 2000-2005 when Trinamool Congress was in power in Kolkata Corporation. Once again Remind you Subrata Mukherji was Mayor of Kolkata from Trinamul,who started Hawkers eviction drive in Siddharta Sankar Roy Cabinet.

With the politicians dilly-dallying, the matter rolled on to the courts as public interest litigation. In 1996, Kolkata High Court asked the state government to submit a detailed report on pavement encroachment. In 1998, another case demanding rehabilitation of hawkers was moved in the court. In 2003, the high court asked the state government to state its stand on hawkers. In 2005, the state government informed the high court that a uniform policy on rehabilitation of hawkers was underway. In 2007, the high court found that its 1996 order was not implemented.

Commenting on a petition filed by environmentalist Subhas Dutta in 2004, the division bench of Chief Justice V.S. Sirpurkar and Soumitra Sen observed in 2006, that the hawker menace was growing like cancer. It was impossible for people to walk on the roads, forget about footpaths.

The advocate general informed the high court that the state government had drawn out a plan regarding the hawkers. The highlights of the plan were earmarking of hawker free zone, creating some hawking zones, setting time limits for hawking, banning erection of permanent structures, keeping two-thirds of pavement free of hawkers, replacing polythene sheets with colourful umbrellas, removing of hawkers from 50 yards (46 m) of crossings, and issuing licences to existing hawkers only.

KMC had conducted Operation Sunshine in 1996 to remove hawkers from Gariahat and Shyambazar. Following the hawker removal drive, the KMC commissioner, Asim Barman, had issued a notification imposing certain restrictions on the movement of hawkers on 21 streets in the city. Bikash Bhattacharya, Mayor of Kolkata, has said that hawkers would be allowed to stay on all pavements across the city and they would be allowed to occupy a third of the pavements along the streets but they would not be allowed to occupy space within a 50-metre radius of road crossings or build any structures. According to the Hawker Sangram Committee, "Hawkers are exploited by the agents of trade union leaders, politicians, police, civic councillors. They have to pay to earn their bread." The hawkers pay   2.66 billion as bribe. This is around 3 per cent of the business. The Committee says, "We are willing to pay rent or some other form of tax to the civic body if we get the right to conduct business. Identity cards will protect us from extortion by multiple agencies,"

In March 2015, Ms MamataBanerjee announced freebees to hawkers which we mentioned in our earlier blog Hawk Eye on illegal Hawkers and we will find that the version of Bikash Bhattacharya, Mayor during Operation Sunshine 1996, as stated above and present version of Mamata Banerjee are similar!! Mamata Banerjee appealed to the hawkers "Don't hawk in front of shops and damage business. Don't encroach carriage ways, and leave a portion of pavements for pedestrians."Is the present Government a continuation of Left legacy?

According to Times of India, Mar 17, 2015, Riding on the trade union-politician-police nexus, new 'mobile' hawkers have infiltrated city streets following chief minister Mamata Banerjee's sops to them announced on Saturday. Several new hawkers took up position around New Market on Monday. The new hawkers have allegedly been backed by Kali Khatik, an influential hawker union leader from INTTUC, the trade union wing of Trinamool Congress.

TOI continues, "There's big money involved in the purchase and sale of hawking rights, be it on the footpath or on the street. Everyone, from the union leader to the local political heavyweight and police, gets a share of the pie," a hawker said.Saktiman Ghosh of Hawker Sangram Committee, who has been at the forefront of the hawker movement in the city, acknowledged the nexus. He even quantified the illegal money that changed hands. "Hawkers in Kolkata have to annually shell out Rs 265 crore to trade union leaders and police. The only way out of this is to regulate and legalize hawking," said Ghosh.

After giving details look into the efforts for eviction of Hawkers by different Governments from Kolkata it is pretty clear that they were and still now are being used politically. It has become a big money game now. The basic problem of unemployment was neither addressed by earlier Governments nor by the present Government. Had unemployment problem been addressed the pedestrians would have got the footpath to walk on.

Reference

- Wikipedia

- Amritabazar, 21 July 1952

- Anandabazar, 11 April 1962

- The Statesman, 29 November 1969

- Anandabazar, 21 March 1975

- Anandabazar, 24 March 1975

- Anandabazar, 26 March 1975

- Anandabazar, 8 April 1975

- Times of India 17 March 2015

- RitajyotiBandyopadhyay, Hawkers’ Movementin Kolkata, 1975-2007, Economic & Political Weekly EPW April 25, 2009 VolXLIV No 17

- Ganguly, Deepankar (30 November 2006). "Hawkers stay as Rs. 265 crore talks". Calcutta, India: The Telegraph, 30 November 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2008.

- "Oh Kolkata! Pavements are for pedestrians". A Better Kolkata.The Statesman, 10 June 2002. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007.Retrieved 16 February 2008.

- Edited by Ananya Roy, and NezarAlsayyad. "Urban Informality". 6. The Gentleman's City. Business and Economics.Retrieved 27 February2008.

- Ganguly, Deepankar (23 February 2006). "So long sunshine, hello hawkers". Calcutta, India: The Telegraph, 23 February 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2008.

- "Glare on hawkers and car chaos - Court seeks status report with time frame for pavements and traffic flow". The Telegraph (Calcutta, India). 13 March 2007. Retrieved 16 February 2008.

- Legal, Our (20 May 2006). "Free roads or court trouble - Hawkers like cancer, says chief justice". Calcutta, India: The Telegraph, 20 May 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2008.

- Legal, Our (22 March 2007). "A roadmap for hawkers off roads". Calcutta, India: The Telegraph, 22 March 2007. Retrieved 16 February2008.

- "State to regulate hawker movement in Kolkata". The Statesman, 28 July 2005. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007.Retrieved 16 February 2008.