An Open Letter to the Prime Minister

From

Please Help Arrest a 3000 Crore Scam in the Making

Battle for Vendors’ Rights Has Turned Life Threatening for Manushi

Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

Manushi had undertaken the work of policy reform for street vendors in the hope of helping to establish a system that gives security of life and livelihood to the exploited and terrorized street vendors. Instead today, my own life and that of many Manushi members is endangered because mafia that preys on street vendors has decided that Manushi is too much of an irritant for them.

I am told that my pleas for extending economic reforms to include the self employed poor and those working in the unorganized sector in India played an important role in the appointment of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS). I joined as a member of the Advisory Group to NCEUS with high hopes.

One of the mandates of the Commission was to redress the problems faced by the urban self-employed poor such as street vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers. We are aware of your concern about the status of the National Policy for Street Vendors because every call from the PMO leads to a flurry of meetings, a lot of talk and paper work and the matter ends there. Manushi has also played a leading role in assisting the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation in drafting model legislation for street vendors. But this is actually a state subject. Therefore, enacting a model law by the Central Government will have no value if the Capital of India cannot provide a worthy role model for its implementation.

Increased Assaults and Economic War on Vendors
Vendors all over the country, including in Delhi, are facing increasing assaults and clearance operations under the dubious guise of beautification drives. Vendors in Gwalior, Patiala, Lukhnow have immolated themselves outside their municipal offices in protest against clearance operations. On July 31st, 2007, eleven handicapped vendors of Varanasi consumed poison in protest against removal of their kiosks. Many more in towns and cities across India have died silent deaths due to malnutrition, hunger and disease since their livelihoods were destroyed by municipal agencies pretending to spruce up their cities by removing encroachments. (Click here for details of these suicides and documentary film on three of these suicides.)

Denied vending licenses by government agencies, street vendors remain trapped in a web of illegality and vulnerability. Repeated Clearance Operations heighten their vulnerability, keeping vendors forever insecure, terrorized and willing to pay continuously higher bribes for carrying on with their trade. Political mafias are minting crores fleecing these vulnerable people. Street vendors in Delhi alone are robbed of at least Rs. 500 crores a year by the extortionist mafias.

Far from combating this organized crime, right in the capital city of India the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has come up with corruption friendly proposals in the guise of implementing the National Policy for Street Vendors. It has informed the Supreme Court that hawking zones to accommodate more than 3,00,000 vendors will be created in Delhi. But the system proposed by the MCD for identifying eligible hawkers for grant of tehbazaris is no less dubious than the existing system, which the new National Policy was expected to reform.

The MCD steadfastly refuses to pay heed to the Action Plan suggested by Manushi, which will help identify genuine vendors for issuing of tehbazari by commissioning an independent agency to carry out a comprehensive photo census of people actually operating as street vendors. (For details of the Action Plan submitted by Manushi click here.) Given the acute shortage of commercial spaces in Delhi, licensed stalls in authorized hawking zones will fetch astronomical prices and rents. For instance, tehbazaris in Lajpat Nagar Central market are fetching a black market price of Rs 40 lakh each. If each Delhi tehbazari is valued at an average of Rs 10 lakh, 300,000 tehbazari sites will involve property worth at least Rs 3000 crores.

Mafia elements within each political party have already worked out plans to corner these tehbazari sites and then rent them out commercially, which will make it impossible for low-income vendors to even come in as tenants. Today, in Delhi vendors pay sums ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 20,000 towards rent of illegally occupied vending spots. Once vending spots become part of legal hawking zones, the rents will shoot up even further. This has the making of a bigger scam than the one executed by the Jhuggi mafia that transformed Ashok Malhotra from a street vendor into a billionaire. The scam in Delhi is bound to be replicated in other cities and towns of India leading to a much bigger racket than prevails at present.

The fate of a small pilot project Manushi executed indicates what the vendors have in store for them if those in charge of implementing the National Policy at the ground level are motivated by corrupt and criminal intent and there is no proper system to keep their greed under check and control.

Origins of the Sewa Nagar Pilot Project

The Sewa Nagar model hawker market was envisaged as an experiment to evolve a practical mechanism for implementing the National Policy for Street Vendors with integrity. Manushi tried providing a model of how civic discipline can be enforced; our cities can be rejuvenated and beautified without forcibly throwing out the poor; and security of livelihood provided for self-employed poor while enhancing municipal revenues.

The project is based on Supreme Court sanction taken by former MCD Commissioner, Mr Rakesh Mehta in 2003 and funded through the MPLAD fund of Mrs. Ambika Soni. Each vendor contributed towards the cost of a redesigned stall and the Sewa Nagar rejuvenation fund. The project involved upgrading the civic infrastructure that included new pavements, park plazas, drains and other sanitary arrangements, etc. Manushi designed low cost yet aesthetic new stalls for project members. (For a pictorial history of the Sewa Nagar Pilot Project click here)

Each vendor voluntarily signed an oath (Shapath Patra) on Rs. 10 stamp paper agreeing to abide by the following disciplines:

‘Pay a monthly rent of Rs.390/ to the MCD through Manushi; Pay Rs.50 per month towards the salary of the Safai Brigade specially hired to maintain a high level of cleanliness in the project area; Stay within the agreed-upon Sanyam Rekha, and promise not to build any extra structures outside the stall area; Promise neither to sell nor rent out the allotted stall. Those who violate these disciplines are liable to have their membership cancelled and the stall sealed’.

Ever since the Sewa Nagar Pilot Project was sanctioned we have faced the wrath of the local gangsters for two main causes:

A). Since membership of the project gave them legal protection vendors who are members of the Manushi pilot project stopped paying the monthly hafta. The local mafia was outraged at this.

B). Manushi refused to give in to threats, violent attacks and blackmail tactics of the local mafia including intervention by well known political leaders, who wanted a certain number of stalls to be handed over to the local dons who are believed to play a “helpful” role in elections.

As a result, new civic infrastructure was repeatedly damaged and the new pavements, drains and stalls were time and again vandalized during and even after construction. Manushi members were repeatedly subjected to violence, intimidation and life-threats to make them abandon the project.

When the terror tactics failed, the mafia approached the High Court for a stay order on the basis of bogus and flimsy allegations. The Hon’ble Court refused to grant stay. But the mafia dons keep filing more and more bogus objections to harass and tire us out.

Unable to grab stalls through violence or blackmail, the local mafia, developed a new strategy. Some of them are involved in extortionist money lending at interest rates ranging from 60% to 120% per annum. Due to the absence of credit facilities many vendors are under their debt. Even when they pay hefty installments, the debt keeps mounting because the interest rate is astronomical. The money lending mafia began to surreptitiously take over the stalls of some of the indebted vendors by making them sign off their rights on Rs 100 denomination stamp paper.
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When these illegal transfers of stalls came to the knowledge of Manushi, we requested the Deputy Commissioner of Central Zone to seal the stalls sold out or given out on rent. Therefore, on January 4, 2007 eleven stalls were sealed by the MCD. This firm action aimed at the mafia unleashed a new and more deadly wave of violence and terror against Manushi.

The reason for the violence is understandable. Due to the transformation of Sewa Nagar from a slum-like hawker market to a neat and well-developed area, the market value of each stall and the combined value of the entire pilot project area is today worth several crores. Each stall already commands a black-market price of Rs.5-10 lakhs depending on its location. The local politicians and their mafia associates are not willing to allow an ordinary vendor to have usufruct rights over a property whose market value is rising fast given the short supply of commercial space in Delhi. They are being ousted one by one through force and fraud. These criminal elements join the bandwagon of whichever party comes to power. Therefore, they are able to get the patronage of political leaders of all hues who are all united by common interest – to ensure that the livelihood of vendors stays captive in their grip so that they do not dare resist paying bribes and do their bidding at election times.

Since April 30th, none of us can enter that area without risking our lives. I myself have twice narrowly escaped being lynched by them. I have been threatened with gang rape and worse if I dare pursue the matter further. Some of our members have been brutally beaten up and face serious life threats. They have been warned not to dare enter the market or they will be killed. Other members are also being threatened daily, roughed up, terrorized, fleeced and forced to sign all kinds of bogus complaints to sabotage the project. We are being implicated in fraudulent criminal cases and subjected to soul destroying harassment.

The message of the mafia is clear: they want Manushi to withdraw from the market so that the mafia can take over the project stalls and other assets unhindered. Manushi has filed a Criminal Writ in the High Court on May 22, 2007 to seek protection for the lives of our members and against the forcible takeover of project property through force and fraud. We cannot protect public property without active support of government agencies. However, while the corrupt among officials, politicians and policemen gang up easily to grab public assets, it is difficult for the honest among them to be as assertive because mafia elements have acquired a vicious grip over the instruments of governance, especially the police at the than level.

It is a telling commentary on the state of our law and order machinery that a project:

The Larger Significance of Sewa Nagar Project
I bring the plight of Sewa Nagar project to your attention because the fate of the National Policy is linked with the fate of this pilot project. If the Government appears too weak to resist the takeover of a small pilot project from criminal mafias, it cannot possibly save hawking zones in the rest of the Delhi and other cities from being similarly grabbed by criminal mafias.

The manner in which the National Policy for Street Vendors is implemented has implications that go far beyond the right to livelihood of street vendors. When vulnerable citizens see the police join hands with extortionist mafias, they lose respect for laws and law enforcers leading to greater crime in society. Today all our markets are in control of criminals with political links. They don’t stop at preying on the poor. The growing political clout and money power at the disposal of criminals renders every one unsafe, no matter how many security guards they position outside their homes.

Safety is indivisible and we all have a stake in ensuring the security of livelihood of all citizens, especially the poor and vulnerable.
We demand that:

Call for Support

We need your support for saving the Sewa Nagar Project and pressuring the government to institutionalize an honest regime for legalizing the status of street vendors all over the country.

Please send the following message to the Prime Minister’s Office at rgopalakrishnan@pmo.nic.in.
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I the undersigned lend full support to Manushi’s campaign in demanding that:

Delhi as the capital of India must demonstrate by concrete example how the livelihood concerns of the self-employed poor can be integrated in the development and rejuvenation plans of every town and city of India.