Press Release

On August 22nd, Manushi Sangathan organised a protest dharna of street vendors to demand protection of the Sewa Nagar model market project from criminal mafias and to demand a more transparent and accountable system of allotting tehbazari licenses. Several hundred vendors participated, including vendors from Sewa Nagar who had been warned by the local mafia that they would be beaten and hounded out of the market like five other vendors if they dared attend the protest. True to the threat as these vendors reached Sewa Nagar the local mafia led by Bhagat Singh and Basoya brothers beat up several vendors. A vendor named Raju was hit on the head with lathis and attacked with a knife leading to injuries on his arms and legs. He was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where he was given medical treatment and kept for observation all night .A criminal case was registered under Section 324 of the IPC but the Basoya gang with help of the police forced him to withdraw his complaint. (For the history of Sewa Nagar and attacks on it see Annexure 1)

Apart from street vendors, the following persons spoke at the meeting and went in a delegation to submit a Memorandum to  the Leader of the House Mr.  Subhash Arya. Supreme Court  Advocate Rani Jethmalani, Prof Dinesh Mohan of IIT, Advocate, Geeta Luthra, Father TK John of Vidyajyoti, Prof Yogendra Yadav and Prof Shail Mayaram of CSDS, Atul from NDPA and representatives of Parivartan. Along with the Memorandum, Manushi Sangathan presented a Note on the basic flaws in the tehbazari scheme adopted by the MCD. ( See Annexure 3)

The meeting started with Jhadu Pooja, as is the practice in all Manushi meetings with the Jhadu symbolising commitment to civic discipline and cleanliness in public spaces, cleanising government of corruption and unity of the weak and vulnerable. (For details of the Jhadu Pooja, see article The Emergency Avatar of Manushi Swachhnarayni, the broom wielding Goddess at our our website www.manushi-india.org

Mr Arya assured the delegation that he would invite Manushi to make a full presentation before a core team of the MCD on how the tehbazari scheme can be introduced and that he would use his good offices to press upon the two BJP municipal counselors to desist from supporting the illegal acts of the Kotla Mubarakpur mafia who are using violence and fraud to takeover the vendor stalls and other valuable assets of the Project.

Memorandum Submitted the Hon’ble Mayor of Delhi

To Demand a Transparent and Accountable System for Licensing Street Vendors and

Seek protection from criminal mafias out to grab Sewa Model Market.

August 22, 2007

Dear Mrs Arti Mehra,

As the first woman Mayor of Delhi, citizens have high expectations from you and hope that you will work to change the work culture of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.As you well know, Manushi has been involved for over a decade in policy reform work to free street vendors from the clutches of extortionist mafias who prey on their illegal status simply because the municipal agencies have had a very restrictive policy for issuing tehbazari licenses. This effort culminated in the adoption of a new National Policy for Street Vendors. Therefore, we welcome the announcement that 300,000 vending licenses are to be issued by the MCD in the next six months by way of implementing the promises made in the National Policy. However, we are deeply concerned about the fact that the MCD has not built in any safeguards to ensure that genuine vendors get these licenses.

The scheme devised for identifying beneficiaries has the making of a mammoth scam. Without heeding our repeated warnings, the MCD has chosen to follow the old, easy to misuse method of inviting applications with Rs 100 deposit each. (Annexure 1 lists some of the inherent flaws in the scheme adopted by the MCD)

Without a reliable system of identifying genuine vendors, simply inviting applications will mean lakhs of bogus applications from dubious persons will pour in the MCD office. The politically connected extortionist mafias who at present control the access to illegal vending sites and thereby extort at least Rs 500 crores of rupees every year will ensure that their own relatives and associates, are the ones who flood the Municipal Corporation with benami applications.

Genuine vendors are likely be left high and dry, as happened earlier with the Gainda Ram scheme for issuing vending licenses. Two Committees appointed by the Supreme Court headed by Justice Thareja and Justice R.C. Chopra who monitored this scheme passed severe indictments on the entire process of inviting and sanctioning vending licenses in the NDMC and MCD areas and stated in so many words that the bulk of applications submitted in collusion with MCD officials were by fraudulent claimants. The current scheme announced by the MCD is also inherently corruption friendly.

That is why Manushi has been advocating a comprehensive photo census of actual vendors and their locations by an independent and credible agency, as a first step towards identifying who is actually working on the streets so that extortionist mafias do not end up cornering bulk of vending licenses. Without this ground level information regarding the persons who are actually braving the elements to earn their livelihood from street trading, there is no reliable mechanism for eliminating bogus and benami claimants. Supreme Court appointed Committees headed by Justice Chopra and Justice Thareja had passed severe indictments on how mafia elements had made a total mockery of the Gainda Ram scheme of the Supreme Court under which applications had likewise been invited in the 1990’s.

Today, in Delhi vendors pay sums ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 20,000 towards rent of illegally occupied vending spots whose sale value in to runs lakhs. Given the acute short supply of commercial spaces the mafia that controls illegal street vending is all set to grab hold of tehbazari licenses to legalize their control over vending sites through force and fraud. With the bulk of tehbazaris in their hands, the rentals and price of these stalls will escalate sharply making the lives of genuine vendors ever more vulnerable.

The fate of a small pilot project executed by Manushi at Sewa Nagar to demonstrate by concrete example how rejuvenation and beautification of our cities could go hand in hand with livelihood security for the urban self-employed poor, how street vendors can be accommodated in the city in a disciplined manner while enhancing municipal revenues clearly shows what is likely to be in store for vendors if the corruption friendly scheme for tehbazari licenses is allowed to become operational. As Sewa Nagar became a disciplined, clean and aesthetic street market with each vendor contributing monthly rent of Rs 390 to the MCD instead of paying bribes, its commercial value shot up and the mafia used sheer goonda power to grab hold of vendor stalls.

What was developed as a model for new hawking zones to be created all over India has been taken over by criminal mafias of the area. Today, some of us involved in the endeavour to help devise concrete measures to bring livelihood security to the lives of street vendors and combat the mafia that holds sway over their livelihoods are facing life-threatening attacks. Our most active members have been brutally beaten up and driven out of the Sewa Nagar pilot project. The local police have failed to bring the mafia elements under check while the extortionist mafias are trying to implicate us in fraudulent criminal cases. (A Note on the history of the endangered Sewa Nagar Project is Annexue 2)

The same story will be repeated all over Delhi if we do not build effective safeguards to keep the tehbazari mafia at bay and ensure that genuine vendors are identified and given licenses through an efficient and transparent system of the kind proposed by Manushi.

That is why we are pressing for a more transparent, honest and efficient system and demanding that:

1. An empowered Task Force headed by the Hon’ble Mayor or the Lt. Governor of Delhi should be set up to institutionalize a rational, honest and accountable system for legalizing the status of street vendors and to prevent extortionist mafias and vested interests from capturing vending spots in hawking zones.
2. A citywide photo census should be carried out as a first essential step to identify those who are actually operating on the streets, their exact location as well as the total number of street vendors actually operating in Delhi as a first step towards determining who qualifies to get tehbazari.
3. All necessary steps should be taken to save the Sewa Nagar Pilot Project for street vendors from forcible takeover by criminal elements by appropriate punitive action against them. Since the local councilors seem to aid abet the local mafia, as the head of MCD we urge you to ask them to support the Sewa Nagar project rather than help sabotage it
   .

The lives and livelihoods of lakhs of street vendors are at stake. Safety is indivisible. If criminal mafias control and dominate every bazaar and every market, none of us can remain safe.

We sincerely hope you will respond with concrete positive measures to our demands and proposals for reform.