Abstract
Street vendors, more popularly known as “hawkers” in South Asia, constitute a visible part of the urban informal population in India and often settle down for sale in public spaces like city streets, sidewalks, and overpasses. This, however, comes into conflict with the “environmental” visions of middle-class citizens who desire to live in a world class city that is spectacular, hygienic, and centered around bourgeois aesthetics. As a result, street vendors are routinely targeted, dispossessed, and evicted. This is partly due to a vision of city planning and beautification, which considers entry points to urban informal economies as illegitimate and problematic. Moreover, the state perceives street vending spaces in the city as antithetical to the making of a world class city. In this paper, we examine the urban environment as a socio-political category where street-based livelihood activities, despite being popularly seen as a “city hazard” formatively proliferate through powerfully shaped strategies of politics and governmentality. This work conceptualizes public spaces as part of the urban environment. It proposes the idea of city streets as an “urban resource” which a multitude of actors struggle to control and access. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata, we reveal how street vendors have been able to contest class animated visions of the city through innovative political strategies and effective mobilization, overcoming the common narrative of street vending as a marginalizing practice. The findings prompt us to ask how urban environmental movements and aligned spatial frictions forge important questions on informal organizations and the political unionization of labor in the city of Kolkata.
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Notes
It must be remembered that Calcutta was renamed Kolkata by the West Bengal Government in 2001.
Ghosh (2004) writes about the term “Bhadralok,” which was used to denote primarily the upper castes in Bengal who used to possess some landed property and had access to liberal education. The word “bhadra” means gentle or polite in Bengali language.
Ray, S. (2022, November 10). “Kolkata: Five-fold rise in hawkers at Gariahat in past seven years.” The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/five-fold-rise-in-hawkers-at-gariahat-in-past-seven-years/articleshow/95414573.cms#:~:text=KOLKATA%3A%20The%20hawker%20count%20in,a%20hawker%20survey%20at%20Gariahat
Calcutta Street Hawker’s Union (CSHU) is one of the largest (in terms of membership) registered hawkers’ unions located on Surya Sen Street in North Kolkata, West Bengal. It is affiliated with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.
Roy, S. (2023, February 20). “North or South Kolkata, hawking rule flout rampant.” The Telegraph. https://www.telegraphindia.com/my-kolkata/news/north-or-south-hawking-rule-flout-rampant/cid/1917587
Some hawker organizations have remained unregistered like the HSC and this decision to not register may have underlying political motivations.
A Resident Welfare Association (RWA) is a non-governmental organization that takes care of the interests and welfare of a residential society or colony in a city.
Street vendors are required to make unofficial and illegal payments to the municipality and the police through the hafta system (which means “weekly” in Hindi). The amount varies depending on two factors: the hawker’s location and the type of goods sold.
Retrieved from India Kanoon (2007, September 28): https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1306341/
South City Mall is located on Prince Anwar Shah Road in South Kolkata. It was inaugurated in January, 2008 and is a popular hotspot for shopping, food and entertainment.
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Dhar, M., Sen, A. & Patnaik, A. Unpacking Urban Environmental Visions and Contestations of Street Vendors in Kolkata, West Bengal. Glob Soc Welf 10, 351–358 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-023-00297-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-023-00297-4