Maharashtra Navnirman Sena might be criticised or attacked by many, but first time I just walked peacefully on Mumbai roads that too on Sunday. No chaos, no roadblocks, no traffic, it was all calm and quiet. I am born here and seen Mumbai growing and expanding but never thought the city will become so congested and suffocating. Footpaths are bad in most parts of the city, but in a ward where three very old and famous markets that spill on to the footpath, pedestrians have an especially tough time negotiating space to walk.
Hawkers are eating into the walking space of citizens. Most of the markets have illegal hawkers and are densely crowded often-creating traffic jams. Matunga Market, just outside the station, has only 30 licensed hawkers but more than 300 hawkers sit on the footpath selling vegetables and fruits. The BMC market, which was to be occupied by fruit and vegetable vendors, has now been rented out to mobile phone, clothes and beauty products sellers and all the fruit and vegetable shops are out on the footpath. The condition is same in almost every station, tens are legal hawkers and hundreds are illegal. Similar is the case with Gandhi Market, a sprawling cloth market in Sion, where hawkers selling clothing items dot the footpaths leaving very little space for pedestrians to walk.
In areas like Pratiksha Nagar and Antop Hill, footpaths are virtually absent and people have to walk on the road while constantly negotiating through heavy traffic and hawkers. There is so much traffic in the evening on the road, but we still have to walk on the road, as there are no footpaths available for people to walk. This also affects the traffic flow; the cars go bumper to bumper. One-kilometer distance takes hours to reach. Some markets are piled up with garbage/stink and heavy water logging in the monsoon, with areas like Dadar TT, Sion and Matunga Circle hitting the headlines every year.
Many like me; those who are residing here are fed up. Our income tax money is misused and we, the citizens feel cheated when basic facilities are not provided to us. I am glad that MNS has adopted an aggressive stance against hawkers occupying railway station premises after the Elphinstone Road railway station stampede that claimed 23 lives and its workers have been driving away illegal vendors since October 15.
Illegal hawkers and vendors near railway stations required facing the wrath. Though, the menace of illegal hawking is decades old in the city, and the civic administration is all too familiar with it but failed to address the same, they protect them for vote bank. They get extra funds and perks by catering such pest.
It has a 32 year history of litigation, and has seen a series of protests but there has been no solution in sight. Struggling to tackle illegal hawkers for the last three decades, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is disastrous to come up with a proper policy, or implement the Supreme Court guidelines in this regard.
In May this year, the Bombay High Court had slammed the civic body for its failure to regulate street vending/hawking in Mumbai to protect the rights of pedestrians, while ensuring the livelihoods of hawkers. In 2010, the Ramdas Nayak Marg Retail Merchants Association had filed a petition seeking action against illegal hawkers in Bandra. The issue goes back to 1985, when the first case between Bombay Hawkers’ Union versus BMC had filed. The Supreme Court had then directed the BMC to frame a final scheme for city hawkers as per the guidelines suggested by it. Litigations kept on coming up, but no proper guidelines or scheme was framed by the BMC. Even today, the civic body is delaying the formation of TVC (Town Vending Committee), an essential ward-wise committee. This in turn is delaying implementation of the court guidelines.
TVC is supposed to include councils of hawkers and street vendors. More than 10 years after the court’s direction, over three years after the BMC rolled out its plan, and six months after it decided to form the Town Vending Committee (TVC), the civic body is far from meeting its targets. The TVC is supposed to conduct surveys to identify street vendors, issue certificates to eligible vendors, recommend areas to be declared non-hawking zones, identify sites and spaces for hawking, regulate timings, etc.
Moreover, these hawkers are spread like mafias, they are happy to bribe, go violent or appease someone to regulate their practices. Just go to some pani-puriwalla or Chinese bhelwalla, humiliate him, loom him, boast about the number of contacts you got and then collect your share of free chakna. It is all that easy. Half of the streets are overcrowded with these vendors just because they have political or influential supporters around.
Finally, someone took a call. I don’t want to debate what is right or wrong but what I see is peace around, people are at ease and everything seems to be so good. I stand with MNS if they continue giving me such basic comforts in the city where I live.
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