Sustainable street vending

Street vending and street vendors are integral to dynamic city life. Incorporating street vending planning with the city's master plan, or zoning atlas is essential to make street vending sustainable. The absence of city planning has made Guwahati streets chaotic, as pedestrian space on narrow pavements along busy city roads is used as vending zones. Ironically, seven years have elapsed since the enactment of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, but this gateway to India's northeast region is yet to formulate the Street Vending Plan as required by the Act. While Guwahati Municipal Corporation is yet to demarcate any vending zones, restriction-free vending zones and restricted vending zones based on a vending plan for the city, street vendors are often evicted arbitrarily. The Section 2(1)(l) of the Act defines a street vendor to be a person engaged in vending of articles, goods, wares, food items or merchandise of everyday use or offering services to the general public in a street, lane, sidewalk, footpath, pavement, public park or any other public place or private areas, from a temporary built-up structure or by moving from place to place and includes hawker, peddler, squatter and all other synonymous terms. The Act requires the Town Vending Committee (TVC) to survey all existing street vendors under its jurisdiction and accommodating all existing street vendors identified in the survey and prohibits eviction or relocation of street vendors till the survey is completed. In India, authorities have completed surveys of street vendors in 2,988 cities and identified 41.92 lakh vendors by November 2020. In Assam, surveys have so far been completed in 77 of 97 towns where provisions of the Act are required to be implemented. The state has notified 104 vending zones but neither Guwahati nor any other town has Town Vending Plan. Of the 63,935 vendors identified in 77 towns, Certificate of Vending (CoV) has been issued to only 1,617 vendors while identity cards have been issued to only 1,871 vendors. The CoV contains details of the vending zone where the street vendor shall carry on vending activities, the days and timings for carrying on such vending activities, besides the conditions and restrictions imposed on such vending activities. The latest report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development points out that notifying vending zone without Street Vending Plan "conflicts with due process of implementing the Act." The Committee took note of many incidents of unauthorized eviction of street vendors during which their wares are destroyed causing huge losses and emphasised that there is a need for "sensitivity amongst the police forces" while handling the evictions of the vendors and recommended the inclusion of the Act in the curriculum meant for training of police and civic body officials. The report further points out that even though the Act empowers the States and Union Territories to declare natural markets, where street vendors carried out business for over fifty years, as 'Heritage Markets' and the street vendors in such markets shall not be relocated but a considerable number of States, however, are yet to declare any area as natural/heritage markets. The Act requires every local authority to prepare a plan for earmarking of space or area for notifying as vending zones and no vending zones in consultation with the planning authority and on the recommendations of the TVC, once in every five years and get approval to the vending plan from the State Government. More than five years after the Assam government notified the Assam Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Rules, 2016 under the Act and updating the database of street vendors, finalization of the vending plans and issuing the CoV to registered vendors have become urgent necessity to achieve the objective of a smart city. While seeking a bid for conducting the survey of urban street vendors and developing the vending plan for Guwahati city, the GMC clarified that in its Request for Proposal that any existing market, or a natural the market as identified under the survey shall not be declared as a no-vending zone; declaration of the no-vending zone shall be done in a manner that displaces the minimum percentage of street vendors; overcrowding of any place shall not be a basis for declaring any area as a no-vending zone provided that restriction may be placed on issuing a certificate of vending in such areas to persons not identified as street vendors in the survey and sanitary concerns shall not be the basis for declaring any area as a no-vending zone unless such concerns can be solely attributed to street vendors and cannot be resolved through appropriate civic action by the local authority. The rapid expansion of the city, overcrowding of residential areas and traffic congestions on city roads need to be considered before finalizing the city vending plan.