Facilitating Pakoda Economy

In the February of 2018, the Prime Minister of India said that selling pakodas too constituted as employment, in response to his opponents’ criticism that no employment was being generated during his rule in India. He was alluding to self-employment in the trade sector, in which a sizeable proportion of urban dwellers are engaged in and dependent on for survival. Now that CMIE has estimated 1.1 million employment loss in the year 2018, the pakoda-economy becomes all the more important.

There are two types of self-employed, in particular, those who are engaged in petty trade such as selling various things and services on the streets. Things sold on the streets are items of daily use, even clothes and footwear, fruits and vegetables, and cooked food items (the golgappas, bhel, idli, pakodas and chai). After the chai selling attained great heights, now the pakora selling too has ascended in importance. These cooked food economy is fragile, it has to be cooked every day, and in peak summers, probably multiple times a day.

Some engage in the chai economy or pakoda economy out of choice and many have become big business rising from the footpaths. For example, Shankar Vijay icecreamwala in Ahmedabad, now has an upmarket ice-cream shop called ‘Shankar’s library’. Or Sarath Babu of Chennai, who started his career of selling idlis on the street to graduating from IIMA and has moved up in life.

But, there are many who engage in chai or pakoda economy out of ‘no choice’ or as fall back arrangement when formal employment is lost. Many formal textile mill workers took to the business after their mills closed in Ahmedabad. Or new migrants to the city, not finding any employment, start selling things on the street. That is, they are engaged in street trade. Or as our Prime Minister has called them, mini-entrepreneurs, surviving by their wits on the hostile streets; paying the ‘local leader’ (agewan), who could be a vendor or local government official or policeman, for right to occupy street space; honked upon by the motorists or any motorised vehicle driver; breathing the polluted air as all our cities have crossed the limits of air pollution tolerance and often target of eviction drives by the local authorities and consequently not just losing their wares and incurring financial loss but also losing right to work for many coming days after the eviction drive. Ofcourse, street vending means working on streets without access to toilets and braving the summer heat, which is expected to worsen in the coming times due to climate change and expected increase in average temperatures in the cities.

If the pakoda or chai economy is the way forward for India, and for Indian cities, coming from the highest person of the country, it should be facilitated. Instead, urban planning categorizes it as encroachment and hence illegal, as this commercial activity is on land which is not earmarked as commercial. Street vending is on footpaths and in city’s plan footpath is part of the road and classified as road-land use and not commercial land use. Besides, footpath is for walking and rightly so, and not for commercial activities. According to the ‘The Street Vendors (Protection Of Livelihood And Regulation Of Street Vending) Act, 2014 (http://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2014-7.pdf) which extends all over India, vending spaces have to be provided in the city’s Master Plan.

The street vendors are evicted by the police because, as per the Motor Vehicles’ Act, street vendors obstruct traffic flow and hence have to be penalised. The Indian Penal Code seeks to prevent obstruction of a public way and if done so the obstruction can be removed. The municipal legislation seeks removal or any permanent or temporary structures on streets and goods hawked or sold in public places. Municipal legislation also require any hawking or vending activity to obtain license from the relevant authority. It is not easy to get a licence and often a liscense is given to a person only if vending is the sole livelihood activity of the family. Note the term family is important here. We know that in low-income households, multiple members of a family have to work to remain above poverty line. How can then vending be the sole livelihood activity of a vendor’s family!

So without facilitation, through providing land for business through the implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection Of Livelihood And Regulation Of Street Vending) Act, 2014, making access to toilets in public places, a protected area for vending and increasing their access to finance, how is the pakoda economy to be an answer to lack of other employment opportunities in urban India.