Guwahati needs decisive action on street vending

Street vendors across the country, including many in Guwahati city, have become micro-entrepreneurs with the Prime Minister Street Vendors' AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme facilitating collateral-free formal credit, digital financial inclusion and their social security. The restructured PM SVANidhi Scheme launched last year, under which lending has been extended to 2030, aims to benefit 1.15 crore street vendors across the country, including 50 lakh new beneficiaries. While easy access to scheme benefits will draw more vendors onto the streets, any further delay in operationalising designated vending zones will only worsen the city's mounting chaos. The recent move of the GMC to enforce a no-vending zone along two roads in the busy Fancy Bazar area and relocate the vendors, effective September 1, will ease traffic congestion and facilitate barrier-free pedestrian movement in the commercial hub. Guwahati, however, cannot keep making small changes; the increasing number of vendors requires a city-wide plan that clearly marks areas for vending, areas with restrictions, and areas where vending is not allowed. The Guwahati Municipal Corporation's chronic failure to streamline street vending in the capital city has created a perpetual trouble spot for both vendors and pedestrians. Vendors face the livelihood risks when the GMC authorities evict them from streets without providing an alternative designated place to relocate and carry on their business unhindered. The accident risk of pedestrians, on the other hand, is rising as they are compelled to walk on the main carriageway past the moving traffic with vendors occupying not just pavements but also roadside space to run their business. Ironically, more than two years have passed since the city's Town Vending Committee identified and the GMC notified 81 vending zones to allocate to about 6,000 street vendors to clear the pavements of obstruction; the number of vendors occupying pavements, denying pedestrians their right to barrier-free movement, has only increased. Delay in relocating the street vendors to the notified vending zones is baffling, as it only reflects a deep institutional failure and glaring lack of administrative will. As the GMC acknowledges that street vending is an important part of Guwahati's urban economy, providing livelihood opportunities to many and essential goods and services to the city's residents, the responsibility lies with it to ensure that street vending is made an integral part of planned city expansion rather than letting it sprawl unregulated across public spaces. Prolonged delays in the relocation of the surveyed vendors only make the lists of allocations obsolete and expose the futility of repeated exercises without implementation. Unregulated growth of street vending has also deepened the plastic waste menace in the city, as these are the hubs for the circulation of polythene bags of prohibited thickness. Along with plastic waste generation, roadside dressing of fish and chicken leaves the surroundings filthy and stinking, worsened by the absence of waste bins to hold the discarded remains and adding to pedestrians' woes. Haphazard parking of vehicles by shoppers near the vending zone adds to chaotic traffic along narrow streets, and incessant honking alarmingly raises noise pollution in the surrounding locality. The clutter and chaos choking the streets can be cleared almost overnight if vendors are relocated to designated vending zones. Eviction operations carried out by GMC authorities occasionally trigger hopes of removing the clutter and ensuring smooth traffic movement and barrier-free movement for pedestrians. Such hopes are short-lived, as any such ad hoc measures cannot prevent evicted vendors from re-encroaching the pavements and roadside areas after not finding alternative space designated by GMC authorities. The issue of relocating the street vendors to designated vending zones must not be stalled by the chicken and egg dilemma of first conducting a fresh survey to ascertain the number of vendors in the city and then creating the vending zones. Based on registration records and a list of PM SVANidhi beneficiaries, the GMC authorities can allot the space for street vendors in a phased manner. Once relocation to designated spaces begins, street vending should be prohibited in other areas until the GMC identifies new sites for vendors. Aligning PM SVANidhi scheme implementation with the city's Master Plan for the creation of vending space is essential to ensure that the beneficiary list does not grow beyond the capacity of designated vending zones. The window for endless planning or indecision in the Town Vending Committee has long closed; vendors must be relocated to designated zones, which is now an overdue necessity. The capital city cannot hope to improve its ease of living index unless it clears the clutter of unregulated street vending. With the city already grappling with a host of civic burdens, allowing the street vending problem to grow unmanageable would only deepen its crises. Streamlining street vending in Guwahati now demands decisive and immediate action.