Hawker raj is here to stay

OUR BUREAU

Mamata Banerjee the administrator prods police to evict hawkers from Calcutta's pavements and Mamata Banerjee the politician protects them from eviction.

The dichotomy between what the Trinamul-led government wants to do and what it would like to be seen doing was much in evidence on Tuesday morning when Mamata sprang to the rescue of hawkers being evicted from Harish Mukherjee Road, in front of SSKM Hospital.

Barely had a team from Bhowanipore police station asked the hawkers to pack up and leave when they squatted in the middle of the road, throwing traffic haywire from around 11.20 till 11.45am. The protesters lifted the blockade when word arrived that they wouldn't be evicted.

Mamata herself arrived around noon on her way to Writers' and spoke to the hawkers for a few minutes. She made the announcement all of them wanted to hear an hour later: "We will not evict anyone, on humanitarian grounds."

So where does that leave the rest of the city whose right to road and pavement has been usurped? Oh well, what can the government do if "the CPM brings in new people" to set up shop on the pavements, pleaded Mamata.

"Their people have encroached more of the space outside SSKM Hospital. Earlier, there were only 12-13 people there," the chief minister said.

Leader of the Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra said eviction without rehabilitation was unacceptable. "We are opposed to the continuing encroachment by new hawkers. But those who have been there for years must be rehabilitated before an eviction drive is launched."

The police's abortive eviction drive, the first since the change of guard at Writers', had apparently been planned after Mamata rebuked the police brass on Monday for not doing enough to rid the city of hawkers. "She had told us that hawkers on the pavements were disrupting the government's beautification projects. Now what are we supposed to make of this?" wondered a senior officer.

Mamata gave an insight into this paradox in a different context later in the day. "There is a boundary between politician and administration. I should not cross my limit," she said in response to Ficci's defence of some of the AMRI directors.

That she stood up for hawker raj in the face of an eviction drive that police say was prodded by her did not surprise a senior bureaucrat who saw from close how the Left Front had dealt — or not dealt — with the problem.

According to him, this was not the first time Mamata had intervened in a hawker eviction plan. "In 2000, the then mayor Subrata Mukherjee had planned an eviction drive that Mamata didn't approve of. So it never took off," he recounted.

"Hawker eviction is a politically sensitive subject. The Left had given them a free run on the city's pavements and Mamata is doing the same," the bureaucrat added.

The problem of hawkers overrunning pavements was taken up by Calcutta High Court in response to a public interest litigation by activist Subhas Datta to protect the commuter's right to free movement.

The court has asked the Trinamul-led government to elaborate its stand on hawkers by the second week of this month. "The government has changed. The new government must have a hawker policy. It should inform the court whether it is planning to remove hawkers from the pavements. It should also declare a rehabilitation package for them," the division bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh and Justice Ashok Das Adhikari had said in mid-December.

Going by Mamata's statement, the government's official stand wouldn't be much different from what the Left Front had stated in court.

The previous government had planned to issue identity cards to hawkers and create vending zones during its last year in office, but failed to work out the logistics. In an interview uploaded on the Trinamul's website, urban development minister Firhad Hakim too has spoken about creating "red, blue and yellow zones" to regulate hawkers.

YOUR PAVEMENT, THEIR BUSINESS

Hawkers in 1996: 1.2 lakh
In 2005: 2.2 lakh
In 2006: 2.75 lakh
In 2010: 3.25 lakh
Hawker unions: 51
Transactions: Rs 8,772 crore annually
Price of 10sq ft of prime pavement space: Rs 1 lakh
Bribes a hawker pays: Rs 30-120 daily
Money police, politicians and officials earn from hawkers: Rs 265 crore annually

How can our pavements bereclaimed from hawkers? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com