The right to earn a living!
It is a deplorable fact that hawkers are continuously forced to bribe policemen and officials just to be allowed to earn a living.

On a street outside a grand hotel in one of our cities lives a small band of abandoned children. There are young girls and boys, some barely able to walk, all of whom tell similar stories of being brought to the city by some aunt or uncle who left them in the street and disappeared. It's a story you hear in city after Indian city and very quickly the abandoned children learn to fend for themselves and look after each other in times of illness or despair. I got to know this particular group because on morning walks I would see them hanging about the pavement stalls that sell idli-dosa and puri-bhaji so I offered one day to buy them breakfast and quickly this became a daily arrangement with the group growing larger by the day. The owner of the food stall was happy to make some extra money and the children delighted and it pleased me to begin my day by doing something to contribute in my small way to lessen the horror of our country's dreadful, dehumanising poverty.

Abandoned kids

My street breakfast programme had been going a few months when the idliwallah told me that a policeman had begun harassing him. "He tells me that he wants me to stop feeding the children because they are poor and dirty and this is a street where big people (bade log) come." I told him to warn the policeman that he would have to deal with me and the harassment has stopped for the moment but I tell you this tale as an illustration of just how evil the Indian state has become. Here I was doing what the state should be doing to protect the destitute and the dispossessed and the only role that the state saw fit to play was to obstruct me instead of taking on the job.

The state claims that it is spending thousands and thousands of crores of taxpayers' money (more than Rs 30,000 crores annually) on 'poverty alleviation' but nowhere do we see the smallest sign of this happening. Quite the opposite. Wherever you see poor people you will hear stories of the daily harassment they face from policemen and officials whom they have to bribe, cajole and beg to simply be allowed to earn enough to stay alive. Nowhere is the horror and poignancy of this more obvious than when it comes to street hawkers and rickshawallahs.

They are abused, brutalised and looted daily by the representatives of the state. It is easy to tread on the fundamental rights of the poorest of the poor because they are largely voiceless. Among the few individuals, who have worked really hard to give them a voice is Madhu Kishwar, social activist and editor of our first feminist magazine, Manushi, so it saddened me immensely to attend a small meeting she had in Delhi last week to give some of us, friends of Manushi, a progress report. What was most saddening was the absence of real progress despite the personal intervention of the Prime Minister himself.

More than two years ago Madhu's campaign for the right of hawkers and rickshawallahs attracted the Prime Minister's attention and he ordered the Delhi administration to ensure that hawker zones were set up in the city. In addition he outlined a clear, carefully worked out policy but Delhi's municipal authorities have chosen to obstruct implementation by coming up with all manner of excuses. So, Delhi's hawkers continue to be forced to bribe policemen and officials just to be allowed to earn a living and the same is true for the desperately poor young men who flock to the capital from villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and are forced to earn a living by driving a cycle rickshaw.

The rules of the game for these poorest of India's citizens are so bizarre that although there are no restrictions on how many cars and taxis someone can own in Delhi there are restrictions on the number of rickshaws. The license-quota-permit raj is still so very alive and well that if you run a rickshaw without a license the municipal authorities have the right to seize it and trash it. Hawkers similarly have their wares confiscated on a daily basis.

Madhu argues that not only is this a serious violation of the fundamental right to earn a living but also clear evidence that economic reforms are happening only for the very rich. If industrial licenses no longer exist and if we proudly claim to have ended the inspector raj then what right does anyone have to demand licenses from rickshawallahs?

Politicians never cease to complain about the lack of support economic reforms have from ordinary Indians clearly without noticing that this is because they have not happened at all. If they had, policemen and municipal officials would not have the powers they currently do to prevent people from earning a living. They argue that this is because cities would become too crowded and cluttered but this is a stupid argument when you consider that if there are restrictions they should be on motorised traffic instead of cycle rickshaws that are environmentally friendly. As for street hawkers there is not a city in the world that does not have them and it has been proven that not only do they provide a service but they can be most useful when it comes to fighting crime. K.P.S. Gill, Punjab's super cop, said as much at one of Manushi's earlier meetings when he pointed out the very useful role street vendors played in helping the police win the battle against terrorism.

Poverty alleviation

More importantly, they have a right to earn a living and if the state were doing its job properly, all it should be doing is regulating where they can ply their trade. Ditto, street children. If the state cannot help by building shelters for abandoned children and ensuring that they go to school and are properly fed, the very least they need to do is stop obstructing those who try in their small way to help. It needs to be said, though, that if we are spending thousands of crores a year on poverty alleviation we have a right to ask why we see so few signs of this "alleviation" in the streets of our cities.