Street vendors angry about lack of protection in State

Mangaluru: The recent forcible eviction of the street vendors in Mangaluru city has given rise to a statewide concern about the future of very popular street foods, vegetable, and fruit vendors in the state. The ‘crude’ way of evicting them in Mangaluru City Corporation has raised further questions on the validity of the methods used for eviction. Concerned citizens of the city ask ‘What was the need for earth moving machinery to evict them? their push carts and petty shops being crushed under the heavy arms of the excavator.

Is it not barbaric? They ask angrily. Which city would not have street sellers? There are street vendors in the uptown areas of developed nations as well. Though they have a licence and are protected by the government there, street vendors in our cities are the least respected members of the community. The police physically remove them from the area, and the civic authorities purposefully do not build any infrastructure or designate a location for the street vendors to operate in the cities. The idea that people cannot honourably scrape by on their own has come to be seen as a disgrace and a source of shame for society.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike does not have a policy for street vendors and so does the cities like Mysuru, Mangaluru and other cities in the state. crackdown on the street vendors in various areas including the transport hubs of the cities have have become regular sites for eviction of street vendors. State Bank circle and the Lady Goshen bus stands in Mangaluru, Subedar Chatram Road, BVK Iyengar road, KR Market, Yeshwanthpura, Malleshwaram, Vijayanagar are some of the areas in Bengaluru, Bamboo Bazaar, Vani Vilas Market, Gandhi circle, clock tower circle and Dhanavantri road in Mysuru city are some of the areas in the state where the crude and inhuman way of evictions take place. Such evictions were quite useless as the vendors will come back and carry on their business in the same place, it is not their problem but it is that of the city’s planners and civic bodies say,

The Bengaluru city has an estimated to have over 1.5 lakh street vendors inside the Bengaluru business district out of which only 3,500 licences were issued without creating any facilities for them. There is also a hefty fees which the vendors do not grudge paying. But rest of the street vendors still living on the edge. “In some places like Yeshwanthpur, Malleshwaram, Rajajinagar and Vijayanagar they have created some kiosks and hawking zones, but that leaves a large number of hawkers outside the system” Basamma president of the Bengaluru JillaBeedibadiVyaparigala Sangha told Hans India. “The government does not have a policy for the safe living of the vendors” she rued. (To be continued)