I attended a rather hilarious meeting today on street vendor policy. There was this very vocal spokesman who wanted fullest rights and autonomy to vendors all over the cities and wouldn't even agree to any security restrictions if required, not to speak of rights of pedestrians or convenience of traffic. And there was the one who demanded pension and payment of insurance premia by the state. Someone would not agree to any no-vending zone while someone talked about exchange of money between vendors and police to settle or evict vendors (and this led to heated exchange of words).Somebody talked about the right to occupy one-third of every footpath by a vendor while someone said that vendors corroborated to Copenhagen Summit resolutions as they emit least carbon emissions. NGOs were not to be trusted but Central Trade Unions; police and municipalities are not to be trusted ("think of Operation Sunshine") and all decisions were to be taken by Town Vendor Committees of which 40% (why 40%? I wondered?) I briefly commented about the possible difficulty in dealing with succession (death/ old age) and induction of new vendors.
The meeting took place in Writers' Buildings, in the office chamber of Minister of Urban Development. Minister announced that there would be a survey of street vendors but that all would ensure that no additional vendors occupied the streets to be counted.
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Before that I attended the first meeting of the committee on State Statistical Bureau. I seems that (finally) the govt of India would give support for setting up dedicated statistical units in the states. A Consultant who seemed to be in love with his own voice wanted to embark on a very long lecture on the reliability of statistical data. I intervened and made my quick points (use PMU consultants and share data) and excused myself.
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