• About one crore of women and men are earning their livelihood through vending and hawking. Vending is an important source of employment for the poor who are somehow able to make both ends meet with small working capital. Many vendors are either erstwhile workers of factories which have been closed or have been pushed out of villages due to lack of employment opportunities back home.
• Vendors contribute substantially to the urban commodity distribution system and provide distribution channel to the products of small scale and home based industries.
• Vendors make available to society commodities like vegetable, fruit, fish, meat cloth, bangles etc. on reasonable price which become unaffordable when they reach big shops.
• They provide an important service to the consumers.

Despite this

• Vendors and hawkers are subjected to constant mental and physical torture by the local officials and are harassed in many other ways which at times lead to riotous situations, loss of property rights, or monetary loss.
• There is hardly any public policy consistent with the needs of street vendors throughout the country.

Today at the doorstep of the new millennium, one crore vendors and hawkers of the country urge the Government to formulate a National Policy having regard to the livelihood and employment rights of the hawkers and vendors by making them a part of urban planning and policy.

• Give vendors legal status by issuing licences, and providing appropriate hawking zones.
• Protect and expand vendors existing livelihood.
• Promote and develop the natural market system.
• Make street vendors a special component of the plans for urban development by treating them as an integral part of the urban distribution system.
• Include the vendors in Town and City Master Plans.
• Issue guidelines for supportive services and social security at local levels.
• Set up a social security fund for street vendors.
• Promote self-governance of hawkers through organising.
• Set up appropriate, participative, non-formal mechanism like tripartite or multiplartite committees with representation by street vendors and hawkers, NGOs, local authorities, the police and others.
• Provide street vendors with relief measures in situations of disasters and natural calamities.

NASVI

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