r/westbengal • u/SickSilence • 21h ago
রাজনীতি | Politics Why I feel removal of hawkers without rehabilitation is a bad idea
A lot of new lovers of the current BJP regime are romanticising the recent demotion drive around eradication of hawkers with the hope of an overall city clean up. Of course if we know anything about BJP, improving the quality of life for the average Indian isn't exactly their moto. However this post isn't a jibe to prove to you guys whether what BJP is doing is going to end well or not, but rather a fact based comparison.
Who are these people who's businesses that are getting eradicated? Well to understand that I need you to first know that Kolkata's informal sector is nearly 60-65% of its total workforce and historically (2000 onwards) has been above 40% [1,2]. This is actually below the national average where about 80-90% of the workforce is in the informal sector, however about 12% of the total informal enterprises in India do come from West Bengal [3,4]. Almost half of West Bengal’s informal enterprises are in micro-manufacturing (like textiles and tobacco), which is the highest share in the country [5]. The rest are your street vendors and domestic help, which sustain the middle class of West Bengal with about 2.7 to 3 lakh such vendors within Kolkata [6]. So who are these people? They are mainly male by about 75-90% and are majority in the age bracket of 35-55 years, with low literacy where about 20% are completely illiterates who use personal savings or some initial loans to start their informal business [7,8,9,10]. Their demography is a mix of locals from the city with about 38-40% being permanent residents of Kolkata with many living there for multiple generations, 40-45% being internal migrants migrating from South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, and Howrah and about 15-20% being interstate migrants coming from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa [9,11,12]. These are not Bangladeshis even though some of these migrants may have roots back to displaced families migrating to india during partition many decades ago. They are Indians and belong mostly to West Bengal and Kolkata. More specifically they are the under previleged Indians who do not have a meaningful representation and voice in the political sphere to ask for formalisation of their business. Neither do they have voice to ask for free education and an upliftment drive, all of which are responsibilities of the government. So what do they do to secure their finances? They contribute to the informal sector, the one that most likely make your life easy, and convenient.
It won't be wrong to say that the informal sector is the heart of Kolkata. But Kolkata isn't the only city where such informal sector became prominent, looking outside there's Bangkok. We will first see how Bangkok took care of its informal sector and then we will try to understand the long term ramification of complete eradication of the informal economy. While India is focusing on an eradication drive, Thailand's approach was towards integration of the informal ecosystem within its formal economy. They promoted easy digitization and availability of online payment applications to help hawkers survive. Their approach was the Khon La Khrueng model. The government created a digital wallet app (Pao Tang) and gave millions of citizens credits to buy food and goods. Crucially, this credit could only be used at small independent shops and hawkers, not at large corporate convenience stores (like 7-Eleven). This effectively funneled billions of baht directly into the informal economy [13,14]. Additional welfare cards were supplied to these vendors so that time to time extra cash flow can be handed to them for their survival through the "Thai Help Thai Plus" program. Finally a formalization drive was also implemented where it was made sure that a large chunk of these vendors became legal and formalized units within the greater economy [15]. Now look at what is going on in Kolkata, which is in sharp contrast to how Thailand helped it's lower socio economic citizens to sustain and rise into the middle class. There are large demolition drives often involving police and paramilitary, just within one month of winning the election. Within one month they could however not come up with a plan of rehabilitation and yet proceeded to completely decimate the informal sector [16].
Of course if anyone remembers demonetisation, swacch bharat abhiyaan, make in India initiative, and many other such gimmick, you will know BJP has a history of "Tughlaq"ification, where their vision is often followed by terrible practical implementation. This is one of them but will, in the long run, be detrimental to the economy of India. And that is because:
The informal sector in Kolkata essentially subsidizes the formal economy by providing cheap food, transport, and goods to the city’s workforce. If street vendors are permanently removed, the cost of survival for the urban poor and lower-middle class will skyrocket [17].
Unlike the 1996 Operation Sunshine (where hawkers eventually returned), the current drive utilizes a more aggressive, centralized enforcement model (as stated often involving the RPF and state police). This could force a massive segment of the workforce (again estimated at over 270,000 people) into destitute poverty, begging, or reverse migration to rural districts like South 24 Parganas [18].
Since hawking acts as a safety net for those who cannot find formal jobs, its removal removes the "employer of last resort," likely increasing urban unemployment and crime rates [19].
Kolkata is historically one of India's cheapest metros largely due to its street economy. If consumers are forced to shift from hawkers to formal retail (malls, supermarkets), the price of daily essentials (vegetables, clothes, household items) could rise by 30–50% for the average household [20].
A significant portion of Kolkata’s working population relies on "pice hotels" and street food stalls for affordable meals. Their demolition directly threatens the food security of daily wage laborers, effectively reducing their real wages [17].
The eviction drive is often viewed as a move to clear space for "corporate India" and high-end real estate, transferring market share from local micro-entrepreneurs to large, formal retail chains. While this may increase formal tax collection, it destroys the velocity of money in the local economy, where hawker earnings are almost entirely spent back into local markets [17].
And of course it goes without saying that the income disparity will increase further, which is not a good news for anything other than the ultra rich among us. So demand the government to formalize the informal sector in the correct way! Remember they don't have a voice but you, the educated youth do, and can make people aware about this!
[1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9786-3_24
[5] https://ordinaryanalysis.substack.com/p/west-bengal-economy-large-by-size-thin-by-structure
[6] https://doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.3903
[8] https://niua.in/sites/default/files/2025-07/2022-2_Street%20Vendors%20in.pdf
[9] https://www.fao.org/4/w3699t/w3699t06.htm
[11] http://data.conferenceworld.in/ICRISEM6/P68-75.pdf
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkers_in_Kolkata
[13] https://www.kaohooninternational.com/markets/567269
[14] https://www.worldfinance.com/banking/growing-together-towards-sustainability-in-thailand
[15] https://www.nationthailand.com/business/economy/40066437
[18] https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2026/0531_pd/%E2%80%98bulldozer-raj%E2%80%99-arrives-west-bengal
[19] https://enewsroom.in/kolkata-hawker-eviction-drives-jobs-employment/
[20] https://hlrn.org.in/documents/Deprivation_to_Destitution_Topsia_Eviction.pdf
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u/Explorer_On_Wheels 9h ago
Rehabilitation should be given to legal entities but not to the illegal entities.
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u/SickSilence 8h ago
Legal entities will not be displaced! Why would they need rehabilitation, they are already legal!
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u/Explorer_On_Wheels 8h ago
I'm not talking about railway hawker, I'm talking about any entity like for Metro project many legal houses were rehabilitated, for highway expansion many houses were rehabilitated. So the legal entities should always either be compensated or rehabilitated.
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u/Miserable-Shopping99 9h ago
removing hawkers without rehabilitation is bad governance, even when the goal of cleaner footpaths, safer stations, less congestion is valid. But eviction as a first response treats poverty as a visual nuisance rather than an economic reality.
Legally too, India already has a framework for this. The Street Vendors Act, 2014 is meant to protect livelihood while regulating vending, and it says vendors should not be evicted or relocated until a survey is completed and vending certificates are issued. Clean streets should not mean destroying livelihoods overnight. Rehabilitation should come before eviction, not after public outrage. A city is not modern just because it has fewer poor people visible on the street, it is modern when it can organize public space without crushing the people who depend on it.