Livelihood Freedom Campaign
Narrative
After the 1991 liberalisation, the poor
do not seem to have gained as much as the rich. The truth is
there has been hardly any liberalisation for the working
poor. For them it has been all LPQ (Licences, Permits and
Quotas) and little LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and
Globalisation). Street entrepreneurs (hawkers, cycle
rickshaw pullers, small shop owners and many others) still
suffer under the weight of regulations, restrictions and
harassment by government and lack basic economic freedom in
the areas of their livelihood.
Exit LPQ; Enter Liberalisation
Delhi has more than half a million cycle
rickshaws providing an affordable and accessible
transportation service to the poor and the lower middle
class. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has mandated that
cycle rickshaws have to be licensed and fixed a limit of
99,000 licenses. Less than 75,000 licenses have actually
been given out. This makes more than 80 per cent of Delhi's
cycle rickshaws illegal. This government created illegality
exposes the pullers to constant harassment and extortion.
Studies suggest that on an average a bribe of Rs. 200 per
month is paid by each cycle rickshaw puller. That makes the
total amount extorted by the municipal and police officers
at Rs. 80 million a month! This is the burden of the
license-permit quota (LPQ) rajof economic unfreedomon the
poorest of the poor in Delhi.
The need to do away with the license raj can be explained
with the following example. Why are there approximately five
lakh rickshaws in Delhi, and not four or six lakh? Simply
because the market demand is for five lakh rickshaws. The
licensed capacity is 99,000, but what impact did it have on
the actual number of rickshaws? If the road capacity was
50,000 or 1.5 lakh, how many rickshaws would actually be on
the road? About five lakh! Irrespective of whatever the
sarkar decides, the people get what they demandfive lakh
rickshaws. It is simple demand and supply. If we abolish the
license system, there will still be about 5 lakh rickshaws
in Delhi because any additional rickshaw puller would not
make enough to stay in that vocation. The licensing system
does not control the number of rickshaws; it only empowers
government officials against the poorto harass and to
extort.
Respect property rights of street entrepreneurs
Unlicensed street entrepreneurs don't have any right over
the means of their livelihood. They are faced with the
constant threat of eviction or seizure. Hawkers are
routinely evicted from their spaces, and their wares
confiscated, as if they didn't belong to them at all. This
is either because of the illegal status that most of them
suffer from with more than just a little help from our
government regulatory machinery and/or under the guise of
beautifying the city by clearing it of encroachments. It is
not true that hawkers free ride on public space. They pay
substantially to the authorities involved and suffer losses
due to frequent evictions. Once caught, their wares are
confiscated and returned to them only after payment of a
penalty.
Do any of these make sense, at all?
Decentralize management of public space
Centralized decision-making can never
accommodate preferences of all members of a community. In
this context, it is imperative that the locus of
decision-making regarding the use of public space be changed
from a single municipal body to multiple wards. The Ward
Committees are a good example of decentralized, local,
participatory governance. Comprising of elected members
representative of a hawkers union, RWAs, MTAs, Housing
Societies/Cooperatives etc. and citizens of that ward who
elect the members of the Ward Committee, they enable people
of a specific ward to know its problems, to identify its
needs and prioritise them, and take decisions on subjects
which can best be handled at that level. The Ward Committee
can collectively take decisions, among other things, on
where and how many hawkers and rickshaw pullers they want in
their area. This is a much better option than decisions
based on bureaucratic whims that arbitrarily decide which
market comprises encroachers who need to be evicted.
Registration versus Licensing
If the government desires to know how
many people are employed in a profession, it can put in
place a registration system. Everyone practicing a trade in
the city will fill up a registration form. The registration
system is very different from the licensing system the
registration system does not require any prior permission,
it simply provides information to government. Also, if a
person is not registered, that does not make him illegal and
outside the purview of law!
In this context, CCS's Livelihood Freedom Campaign demands
that the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill 2004 not overlook
the plight of street entrepreneurs and in the spirit its
objective to provide for the safety, security and welfare of
these workers, include at least the following provisions-
1) Remove all licenses and
restrictions on entry-level professions.
2) Respect the property rights of street entrepreneurs to
their machinery and merchandise.
3) Decentralize the management of public space by creating
ward-level governing committees.
Occupational delicensing and deregulation should take
priority in the agenda of the government, rather than
embarking on massive employment generation schemes that
hardly benefit the people they are meant for.
Champion Livelihood Freedom!
More Examples
On the one hand the government pours money into rozgar
yojnas and subsidy schemes for the urban poor, and on the
other hand, it prevents people from earning an honest
living. The money for such schemes ironically comes also
from the poor since indirect taxes contribute more to the
exchequer than the direct taxes. Instead of taking money
from a section of the poor in the name of helping the other
section of the poor for their employment and welfare, the
government should first let the poor earn their living
themselves.
Economic freedom is more valuable for those at the bottom
rung of the economic ladder. Nobody appreciates free
enterpriseabsence of government regulations and controlsmore
than the poor unlicensed hawker. The rich can always find a
way around government controls, the poor have no way out.
Delhi Municipal Corporation Cycle-Rickshaw Bye-Laws
1960 Section 17A
Any cycle rickshaw found plying for hire without a licence
or found driven by a person not having proper licence as
provided under bye-law 3(1) and (2) shall be liable to be
seized by the Commissioner or a person duly authorised by
him in his behalf. The cycle rickshaw, so seized shall be
disposed off by public auction after dismantling,
deformation of such process including smashing it into a
scrap after a reasonable time as may be decided by the
Commissioner from time to time.
Delhi Municipal Corporation Cycle-Rickshaw Bye-Laws,
1960 Section 3
No person shall keep or ply for hire a
cycle rickshaw in Delhi unless he himself is the owner no
person will be granted more than one such licence.
Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act,
1888
Prohibition of deposit,
etc., of things in streets Section 313, Technical
condition(iii)
They [hawkers] should not hawk within 100
metres from any place of worship, holy shrine, educational
institution and general hospital and within the periphery of
150 metres from any Municipal or other market.
Empower the poor with economic
freedom. A arthik azadi ki aaghaz!
Online Petition
Consider the burden of government
regulations a street entrepreneur in India has to face
daily:
• Street hawkers :
Street hawkers and vendors aren't exempt from such
burdensome legislations either. There are more than 600,000
street hawkers in Delhi, of whom only about five per cent
have the tehbazari (license) permit to hawk their goods on
public space. The rest are subjected to continuous
harassment through extortion and/or eviction.
The result of such regulations is that
most of these street entrepreneurs are doomed to a life of
illegality. It is a vicious cycle- because of their illegal
status, they are exposed to constant harassment, and
extortion at the hands of the concerned authorities who have
a vested interest in keeping them illegal since they stand
to gain from the constant payment of bribes to ward off
evictions.
According to the Mumbai Municipal
Corporation Act, 1888, hawkers should not hawk within 100
metres from any place of worship, holy shrine, educational
institution and general hospital and within the periphery of
150 metres from any municipal or other market.
In such a scenario, a hawker on a
sidewalk can spread his wares only up to the reach of his
hands, as he has to be able to gather them and run as soon
as the siren of the police vehicle is heard, else the wares
would be confiscated. His business is limited by the reach
of his arms! This is also true for hawkers in hawking zones,
but who have no license.
The cost of such illegality is that the
street entrepreneur is condemned to lifelong poverty. Even
if he has savings or the capacity to borrow to expand his
business, he is unable to take advantage.
• The government's initiative to address
the plight of street entrepreneurs such as these has come in
the form of the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill 2004.
However, this Bill overlooks the situation of self-employed
street entrepreneurs. Centre for Civil Society's Livelihood
Freedom Campaign demands that this error be rectified by
including at least the following provisions-
1. Remove all licenses and
restrictions on entry-level professions.
2. Respect the property rights of street entrepreneurs to
their means of livelihood and merchandise.
3. Decentralize the management of public space by creating
ward-level governing committees.
If you are in favour of empowering the poor with
livelihood freedom then endorse our petition- Champion
Livelihood Freedom
Rahul Bose endorses the Livelihood Freedom Campaign
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