Footpaths for People or Vendors? Encroachments Choke Assam’s City Walkways

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Whom are footpaths meant for—the public or vendors? Vendors encroaching upon footpaths are not a problem in Guwahati alone. It is the same story in Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Nagaon, and all growing cities and towns in the state. Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) miserably failed in making the footpaths free of vendors in Guwahati, and so do the other civic bodies in the rest of the cities and towns in the state.

According to the Street Vendors Act, 2014, the GMC is to identify vending zones in Guwahati and shift vendors there. The GMC selected 81 locations in Guwahati as vending zones. However, the ground reality remains that the civic body is yet to shift the vendors to the selected vending zones. The result is that vendors have encroached upon each and every footpath in Guwahati. The vendors even spill over to roads from footpaths.  

To cap it all, illegal and haphazard parking, especially of two-wheelers, on the footpath is also a genuine menace in Guwahati. The spirit of the Street Vendors Act, 2014, is ‘protecting the rights of the street vendors to use the roadside for vending needs to be balanced with the right of citizens to use the pavements for barrier-free and safe movement.’ However, the civic bodies can save neither the rights of the vendors nor of the citizens.

According to an estimate, Guwahati alone has over 50,000 vendors, and most of them do not possess registration. Taking advantage of the existing vacuum of monitoring mechanisms, the vendors occupy footpaths every day. With authorities not taking any preventive measures at the initial stage, the number of vendors goes up gradually and develops into a market within a short span of time. The GMC responds to public protests by conducting raids and evicting some vendors, who then return to the same location within a day or two.

Guwahati has no barrier-free footpath. The congestion, like in Guwahati, is now happening in Dibrugarh, Jorhat, and other cities and towns in the state.

According to sources, a city or a town can never get rid of vendors. Thousands of families eke out their living through vending. The responsibility lies with the authorities concerned to streamline vendors, keeping the rights of the vendors and the citizens intact.

A vending zone does not need any complicated structures. Identification of an area as a vending zone and providing the bare minimum of facilities can serve this purpose. For the past four to five years, the GMC has been holding marathon meetings with various stakeholders. The GMC’s inability to shift vendors to the identified vending zones in Guwahati causes suffering for the public.

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