ARTICLE | Street Vendors In Urban Economy
COVID-19 threw street vendors into a deeper state of uncertainty The COVID-19 pandemic created perturbing disturbances in the economic structure of India, a developing country already dealing with existing socio-economic uncertainties. In March 2020, the Government of India imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Street vendors in India, an integral part of the nation’s informal economy, were thrown out of their senses with the announcement of a month long lockdown overnight, which left them exposed to the virus, unemployed, and vulnerable
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eriodic Labour Force Survey, conducted in 2017-18, found that there were around 11.9 million street vendors in India. With job opportunities decreasing in India and cities having continuous inflow of migrations from rural areas, the profession of street vending became lucrative for the unskilled, uneducated, urban poor to survive.
Challans fined by urban local bodies (ULBs) due to lack of registration and licenses, bribery indirectly asked by government officers, lack of access to social security, rising inflation rates in cities, and debts were already pressing on the shoulders of street vendors when the COVID-19 pandemic hit India. Recognising the urgent need to provide credit for working capital to street vendors to help them survive during the lockdown and to
To Abdul, the COVID-19 pandemic seems very similar to Delhi’s municipality and police, for both of them have pushed him into living a life of high uncertainity. Nobody knows when the government might impose lockdown again, shutting his source of income, and nobody knows when the police or the ‘Committee’ might show up and ask him to pay fine for working as a street vendor, which currently amounts to more than his two weeks’ income
38 April 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
resume their business afterwards, the Government of India in June 2020 launched the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme, which aimed to facilitate working capital loan of up to `10,000 each to street vendors across the nation’s cities. However, according to reports published by the Centre for Civil Society, out of 7263 towns across the nation, only 33 per cent have a notified town vending committee (TVC) and only 50 per cent of these notified TVCs have issued ID cards to vendors. Additionally, Thomson Reuters Foundation held a series of interviews last year in New Delhi and found that out of 15 street vendors interviewed, only three said that they had applied for the loan offered under PM SVANidhi, while others said they did not plan to apply because of lack of interest in the amount that is being offered and an
