Understanding street vendors as an issue : Occupied pavements, empty
- Sangai Express Editorial :: May 24, 2013 -

Empty stalls. Unoccupied floors. Occupied pavements. Occupied road sides. Just eight words but taken together they come somewhere near the perfect description in and around Nupi Keithel today.

Woven around the description, as portrayed by the eight words, is the plight and conditions of hundreds of street vendors.

Extend this observation a little bit and one sees a Government which has not at all been sensitive to the environment thus created.

It certainly does not make any sense for the pavements and the roadsides around Nupi Keithel to be choc-a-bloc with street vendors while the upper floors of the grand new structure of Nupi Keithel remain empty and unoccupied.

Street vendors are today no longer a term that merely denotes a group of people selling their wares by the roadside without authorisation. It is an issue today, not only in Manipur but across the country.

There however lies one big difference, a difference large enough to merit the attention of the people who have some concern for the place.

A policy for street vendors is still in the realm of the unattainable at the moment, but what beats all logic and common sense is why the roads in and around Nupi Keithel should be filled by street vendors when the upper floors of the main structure remain unoccupied.

A faulty licensing system or the unability to issue the licenses since there are just too many powerful and influential people ready to put their fingers in the pie.

More a case of a tussle amongst the mighty and powerful to get their quota of licenses which then of course can be given away after striking a deal or a bargain with the vendors.

The cops are obviously doing their job. However it is not at all a pretty sight to see the men and women in uniform scaring the daylights out of the street vendors, tossing their wares and at times even landing a blow or two on the frail bodies of the elderly women street vendors for setting up shop on the pavement or the road side.

The point is, this unpleasant situation can be rectified to a large extent if the Government has the sensitivity and the interest of the street vendors, who come lower down on the economic strata.

Some glaring examples should sufficiently explain where street vendors, as human beings and as issues, figure in the Government’s scheme of things.

Some years back the Tribal Market at Old Lambulane was inaugurated amid much fanfare by none less than the UPA Chairperson and president of the All India Congress Committee, Sonia Gandhi in 2010.

Today this structure stands alone, unoccupied. Contrast this with the women vendors, mostly tribal women, who brave the rain and Sun along Dingku Road to sell their wares. Again it was some time back that the market sheds at Nagamapal were demolished, in line with the road widening procedures of the Government.

Perfectly in tune with the steps taken up to ease the traffic snarls along this route, but there are significant questions that remain to be answered.

Where have the women vendors or vegetable sellers been shifted to ? Lamphel, in front of Shankar Talkies was the site designated for these women vendors.

But why have no steps been taken up to build a shed for them at the new site ? What has happened to the building material of the earlier market such as the CGI roofs ? How about the pillars ? Pilferage at its best show here ?

The moot point is, street vendors is an issue and more than this, it is about a class or group of people trying to eke out a living by hawking their wares at the next available space.

It is a tragedy, a sort of a tragedy, that the Government seems to have overlooked the fact that 90 pc of the indigenous vendors or street vendors are women.

That such an important and sensitive issue, where women are again at the core point, has been banished to the back burner says something very significant about a Government which celebrates Nupi Lan every year as a State holiday. End the charade and address the issue of street vendors as benevolently as is expected from a democratically elected Government.