State keen to integrate hawkers in city infra guideline

Karnataka government is keen to integrate street vendors and hawkers in formal infrastructure policies like stall and allocation and market or pedestrian and road facility design guidelines, key people behind a study said on Tuesday.

A detailed analysis has already been carried in Bangalore in order to explore integration of the street hawkers and vendors into this formal infrastructure system. Use of pedestrian micro-simulation for arriving at design guidelines for footpaths integrating street vendors and hawkers has been undertaken, according to co-investigators of the project — Ashish Verma and Anjula Gurtoo from CiSTUP (Centre for infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation, and Urban Planning) Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

“The government of Karnataka is keen to pursue a formal integration policy for street vendors and hawkers,” Verma said. The two-member team explored pedestrian and facility policy guidelines for Bangalore city that considers and integrates provisions for hawkers and street vendors. The total sample size for street vendorsôhawkers was 871 and for the customers was 779. The surveys clearly revealed the pattern of vending, the work related operational issues and concerns, and the ‘entrepreneurial’ nature of their work.

Some of the significant results were: The nature of the social set up and work preferences revealed that 72 per cent of the respondents preferred to continue with vending as their primary business. Reasons were two fold, a) family tradition, and b) low set up cost. Their work requirements varied with different types of localities and the choice of location was critical for business.

The location was selected according to the demand for the goods they sold, ease of access to raw material and ease of access to transportation.