Presentation session to Rajasthan Government officers

Dear all,

To update you about me and the campaign (Jeevika: Law, Liberty & livelihood) I am working on, we offered a workshop/presentation session to Rajasthan Government officers to give our expert input regarding effective and time bound implementation of the Bill on Urban Street Vendors. There were officers of the state related with vendors’ issues including the Principle Secretary (UD&H), Director ULB, Police Superintendent (Traffic), Secretary (HB), Secretary Development Authority along with CEO/Municipal Commissioner of four cities.

We had two experts to talk about how the Urban Street Vendors Bill (Protection of Livelihood and regulation of Street Vending) can be implemented. Ms Shalini Trivedi from SEWA talked about how the planning should be done at city level according to the provisions of the Bill. Mr Arbind Singh from NASVI talked about what are needed to be done to implement the policy. We also screened a small documentary on NASVI experience in Bhubneshwar and then we had a Question & Answer session.

Major issues that raised and addressed in the meeting are:

1. Land for Vendor markets
2. Vendors’ management at prime locations
3. Vendors’ management in old walled city
4. Identification of genuine vendors
5. Guarantee of not coming back to the same place
6. Licensing would lead to black market of licenses
7. Tolerance level for government
8. Influx of population from outside of city
9. Sustainability of vendors policy
10. Process of licensing

We also had few street vendors representative from major cities of Rajasthan and few representatives of NGOs of Jaipur. People also raised the issue of recent eviction in Jodhpur.

Mr. Snadhu Principle Secretary of Urban Development and Home has given instructions to take up the recommendations and start work immediately in all big cities of Rajasthan.

I can say that overall we had good start in Jaipur and things look positive. Now we need to enlarge this momentum and get things done on the ground. I am also attaching one picture of the meeting. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of battery in between the program and I had not many good pictures to choose from.

Thank you to all of you who joined us in the meeting. Do share your opinion about the meeting and your ideas for the way forward.

Wishes,

Amit