It was a pleasure to talk about street vendors & planning in Delhi hosted in Csd India. Appreciate the kind invitation by Nivedita Sharma Singh. I presented my argument on how master plans are the stumbling blocks in the implementation of the SV Act/ street vending in Indian cities. And hinted at ways in which cities must be planned better for vendors.

Those interested in knowing more, please refer to: https://epw.in/journal/2023/8/review-urban-affairs/planning-informal.html Do DM/message me if you need a PDF of the piece. 

Key arguments:

1. Draft MPD 2041 and its absence of inclusion of provision for vending and SV Act 2014 is an antecedence to the impending challenges of implementing SV Act, and to understand how it will be resisted, diluted and excluded from planning practices. 

2. The Street Vendors Act is an outlier & contradicts neo-liberal urban logic and challenges the state that is used to removing informalities to ‘protect’ and ‘regulate’ street vending by assuring ‘space’. The provision of a norm of 2.5% is unpalatable to the state. 

3. Planning to regulate and ascribe a location to vending conflates street vendors as location-specific “units,” “shops,” and “markets,” is forcing the imagination of informal street vendors into “formal” shops. 

4. The SV Act &its provisions, especially that of the TVC, aim for a more participatory democratic decision-making vis-à-vis street vendors. The TVCs currently, under the leadership of the chairperson of ULB, are usually rudderless without any spatial articulations 

5. Urban planning practice and its legislations remain aloof from the “social reforms” and “constitutional mandates” of post-independent India; without any (continuous) reforms concerning social justice in the political sphere, they have mostly remained restrictive. 

6. Equality in law does not guarantee equality in social life. Even though legalised and protected, the labels of street vendors are still viewed as “illegal” and as “usurpers” of space in the cities. 

7. Lastly, also concerning the schemes in the urban, the priorities, and focus of the state agencies are usually on the ones that have national rankings, resources, and impetus like SBM, SCM, and so on. Making it imp. to plug the SV Act into these schemes nationally. 

Many thanks to those who could join – in person or virtually. And contributed with questions, ideas and suggestions. Looking forward to more!

By Aravind Unni