Criminal laws in India dating back more than a century have finally made way for the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 (BNS), with this new penal code coming into force from 1 July. This switchover from pre-1947 provisions of law marks a significant moment in updating our legal framework.
Ironically, it’s a street hawker who looks likely to go down in history for being among the first to face charges under it. On 1 July, an FIR (first information report) was registered by the police in Delhi under Section 285 of the BNS against the said vendor for causing obstruction under a foot-over bridge of New Delhi Railway Station.
Such vendors dot India’s urban-scape and can be found on almost every street, selling a variety of wares—from fruits and snacks to clothes and daily-use items. Many public spaces resemble bustling markets with buyers teeming around pushcarts, tripods and makeshift stalls. Given this reality, it’s a challenge to keep public pathways free of obstruction.
After all, countless vendors do it openly everyday. To be sure, India does have a law in the form of the Street Vendors Act of 2014 to govern street vending. In addition, some states have their own rules too.
Implementation of the 2014 central law, however, seems to lack the cooperation needed of local administrations, with a chaotic free-for-all visible on so many streets. A hawker’s ability to operate at a particular public spot is often dictated by the arbitrary nod of a public official, rather than the lawful distribution of hawking rights.
The law was framed to set all this chaos in order. It provides for the setting up of Town Vending Committees by local governments, which would undertake surveys to map all vending zones, split localities into those where it’s allowed, where specific restrictions apply, and where this activity is outlawed.
Hawkers, as envisaged, could obtain certificates to operate at these spots for a fee over a specified period. With such licences to show the police, they’d get a chance to prosper. The test of this regime lay in whether it would eliminate bribery bred by uneven law enforcement at the street level, what with entire networks of cops and officials suspected to be stuffing their pockets with payoffs.
How has the law panned out? The answer varies across urban India, but its efficacy has been largely unsatisfactory. Given the multiplicity of authorities involved, its fair and equal application was never going to be an easy task.
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There’s another difficulty. Intervening in street interactions of demand and supply holds back commerce, which explains why hawkers being cleared by cops often attract sympathy. This activity is largely informal but still a key source of livelihood for many of India’s poor. While leniency towards hawkers mustn’t be a nuisance for others—and nobody should get to obstruct any passage—it’s helpful to let markets operate as freely as possible within that legal constraint.
So long as demand and supply get to meet, this commercial activity serves a valid purpose. We just need to keep it orderly. And ensure that the mechanisms we deploy don’t act as stifling tools of control. For big business, India abandoned its old Licence Raj in the early 90s.
By dropping umpteen rules that called for a stack of permits covering everything from what an enterprise could make to how much, we liberated India Inc’s supply responses to demand. Let’s look at street vending likewise. If licences are necessary to keep pathways free, these should be neither scarce nor hard to obtain. Let’s balance all interests equitably.