Contextualising Urban Livelihoods: Street Vending in India

Abstract

Street vendors – and the mode of production and consumption that their livelihood constitutes and represents - are ubiquitous in every city across the world today precisely because the problem of production has not truly been solved. Street vending – a phenomenon as ancient as urban settlement itself – represents in many ways the modest (and less belligerently confrontational) fore-runner to the occupy movements that grip our cities today. As India ushers in an era of foreign investment in retail trade, a critical examination of the context of street vending in India enables an appreciation of deeper theoretical issues concerning culture, citizenship, commodification, consumption, public space, social movements, and constitutional fairness. While this essay focuses on an admittedly eclectic range of themes and categories of analysis, the hope is that the reader is nonetheless left with a sense of what is at stake in ongoing discussions on market reforms and urban street vending in India. Please note, this essay was first published online on Azim Premji University's Law, Governance and Development Initiative (LGDI) blog.

Keywords: street, vendors, vending, India, law, policy, Constitution, occupy, Benjamin, court, consumption, commodification, space, livelihood, spatial, city, urban, urbanism, planning