By Joel Kyndiah
Four years ago, as a group of young people in Shillong advocating for intersectional environmental justice, under the banner of “Fridays For Future,” we raised concerns about the proposed construction of the ‘Barik Mall’ in the PWD Estate at the Civil Hospital junction. The proposed construction aimed to create a high-end mall, similar to the Saket Mall in Delhi, replacing the earlier proposed construction of the ‘Iconic Place’ and terminating the design awarded for the same.
The ‘Iconic Place’, was envisioned as an open space for the public, featuring underground parking, amphitheatres, an art gallery, and dedicated areas for vendors – perhaps akin to the temporary kiosks set up at Wards Lake during the recent events such as the Literary Festival or the Wine Festival earlier last year. I hope I am not too optimistic in assuming that these vendor spaces, as outlined in the Detailed Project Report of the Iconic Place, would be accessible to all residents of Shillong – hawkers, the “middle class”, and the wealthy elite.
When we petitioned the proposed conversion of the PWD estate into a mall, we were met with surprised reactions, both intriguing and disdainful. Nevertheless, we were firm in our resolve in intersectionally rooting environmental issues, urbanization and gentrification. As residents of the city with already limited public resources and open spaces, we felt we should have a say in how urbanization unfolds, and we grounded our petition against the mall that environmentalism goes beyond the fads of tree plantation, tote bags, and metal straws, but must be rooted in class and social consciousness, and its relationship with resource utilization and urbanization. We argued that the positioning of a mall as an “economic solution” and “infrastructural solution” reinforces a myopic understanding of economics and urban planning, and one that reinforces gentrified markets over accessible community spaces.
In this context, Lyzander Sohklet’s article yesterday, “Lawless Streets: How Hawkers in Laitumkhrah Are Endangering Lives and Livelihoods” (TST, 3rd December 2024), reminded me of the same response we faced from the “middle class” in Shillong when we advocated for more participatory, non-class-based public spaces in the face of unplanned urbanization and gentrification.
While my use of the term “urban planning” may be rebutted in an article in defense of hawkers and street vendors, I pre-emptively argue that the alleged economic and social disruptions caused by hawkers and vendors in Laitumkhrah, does not arise from their presence, but from a historical lack of inclusive urban planning, which fails to integrate vendors into Shillong’s formal structure, as underscored by the recent protest outside the Shillong Municipal Board and the night protest in Police Bazaar, against their illegal relocation to a ‘notified vending area’, when no proper consultation with the Hawkers and Street Vendors Association in the Town Vending Committee was carried out in the full spirit and letter of the law.
In the article above, Lyzander Sohklet positions the “middle class” as stuck in a cross-fire between the wealthy upper classes detached from the realities, of “daily street-level conflicts” of the middle class, and the seemingly manipulative “lower classes” who have leveraged the art of garnering sympathy for their “actions”.
This portrayal of the middle class as voiceless victims trapped between two antagonistic forces – the wealthy elite and the “sympathy-leveraging” hawkers, is problematic, for it reflects a misplaced sense of victimhood, which if I may, – cultural critic Slavoj Zizek would argue that this narrative framing of the “middle” class between the narrative of the “rich” and the “poor” serves as an ideological fantasy that allows the middle to displace its anxieties onto the hawkers and street vendors, thus avoiding their confrontation with the structural inequalities perpetuated by capitalism.
In doing so, there is a reinforcement of a zero-sum understanding of class-relations, where the economic survival of one group is perceived as inherently detrimental to another. In reality, the struggles of the middle class restaurateurs and café-owners in Laitumkhrah and the hawkers, are interlinked, both shaped by systemic economic vulnerabilities. Moreover, this self-perception of the middle class as “silently suffering” does not account for its role in upholding an economic system and government policies that marginalize informal workers while enabling wealth accumulation of the upper and the “middle” classes.
It was also argued that hawkers cause a “gauntlet of obstructions” preventing the right of students and pedestrians to utilize the footpaths, effectively compromising the spaces of the middle classes. Though a legitimate concern, in highlighting that the area surrounding Nazareth Hospital is a notified no-vending zone, but that the vendors are flouting the same, along with the illustration that pedestrians are in danger, by citing an example of a recent accident in the area. While this observation does highlight the potential dangers posed by such a situation, it also raises the question of who has the right to inhabit and shape urban spaces.
In this regard, I cite noted French sociologist, Henri Lefebrve’s notion of the “right to the city”, which was recently reiterated by the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Ajay Maken vs. Union of India, upholding the constitutional right of slum dwellers against forced and unannounced evictions.
The “right to the city” articulated by Lefebrve argues that urban spaces should not be solely controlled by market forces, such as commodification and capitalism, but should be shaped and governed by the citizens who inhabit it, and in this context, the hawkers and street vendors. Hence, this perspective challenges the implicit privileging of a bourgeois aesthetic of order that underpins the article. Arguing that “hawkers are endangering the lives and livelihoods”, is to prioritize a bourgeois aesthetic of order that values controlled environments over the pluralistic dynamics of urban spaces which is evidently sliding in Shillong. Doing so alienates the hawkers and propagates a belief that we ought to conform to a middle class imagination of propriety and aesthetics.
Also, this framing of hawkers as impediments to the desired urban order of the “middle class” is arguably akin to the logic of exclusion and mob justice that underpins the “bulldozer raj” seen in recent times, where municipal authorities in India demolish the homes of individuals and even whole communities in the face of offences where an individual has allegedly committed, and as revenge against protesting ethnic and religious minorities as seen in Uttar Pradesh, and Assam. Fortunately the Supreme Court has come down heavily on this system for clearly violating basic principles of law, and municipal executive authorities as judge, jury, and executioner.
It was also stated that hawkers and street vendors have the “audacity”to threaten “legitimate businesses” and “legitimate establishments” which support numerous families and entrepreneurs who are drowning in a sea of injustice due to skyrocketing rents and diminishing revenue.
Effectively such arguments ignore the socio-economic systems that necessitate informal labour. Hawkers inhabit a liminal space within the economy, where formal employment opportunities are scarce, and informal work becomes a means of survival. In arguing that hawkers have “audacity” to threaten “legitimate businesses”, is to frame their labour as illegitimate, and overlooks their crucial role in sustaining urban economies by providing affordable goods and services to lower-income groups. The middle class’s assertion of economic legitimacy and superiority reflects nothing but a cultural anxiety about downward mobility, clearly juxtaposed between eating at chic Laitumkhrah café, and a standing mess just outside of it.
While the concerns of unregulated street vending are valid for reasons such as congestion and food safety, etc., the effort of the hawkers and street vendors trying to secure their rights and implementation in letter and spirit of the National Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihoods and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 must be appreciated. The hawkers fought for this for six years since 2016, with the state government repealing the exclusionary state Act in favour of the National Act in 2022.
Rather than treating hawkers as a “menace”, we must question the broader cultural logic that normalizes such antagonisms. The middle class, which I am also guilty of belonging to in the pursuit of imagined orderly urban spaces, often attempt to isolate themselves and fend for their own self-interests.
It must be reiterated that the “right to the city” is not just a legal or an economic right but a cultural right that enables everyone the capability to assert themselves and a Shillong that values the economic contributions of all the residents, and not just the middle class.
(This article is a personal reflection of the author’s own views and is not affiliated with any organization or institution. The author can be contacted via [email protected])