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From: SAVE MUMBAI <madhu_sawant2000@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:25pm Subject: List of most-corrupt departments = Hafta /bribes paid out by Mumbai Hawkers amount to 25 Crores .- Decline of a great city. Dated------21/03/2005 To, Director General , Anti Corruption Bureau , Madhu Industrial Estate, 1st Floor, Pandurang Budhkar Marg , Lower Parel, Mumbai ?? 400 013. Sub:-List of most-corrupt departments --Hafta or weekly bribes paid out by Mumbai Hawkers amount to 25 Crores :- Decline of a great city. List of most-corrupt departments releasedExpress News Service Mumbai, February 17: WHEN a former police commissioner lists some of the biggest government departments as the most corrupt, it??s time to worry. Dr P S Pasricha, director general of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), listed Revenue, Police, Sales Tax, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board as among the most corrupt state government departments. So does that leave anyone at all? It leaves names like the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, the Road Transport Office and the Excise Department??they make up the rest of the list. Pasricha was addressing a press conference on Thursday at the ACB??s Worli office and said ACB traps are 100 per cent accurate but conviction rates are only 35 per cent to 37 per cent. This year??s two high-profile corruption arrests were of IPS officer Rahul Gopal and the director of Mahananda Dairy, Shivaji Talekar. Pasricha said low conviction ratios were mainly due to ??????lengthy court procedures that see the complainant withdrawing the case or losing interest, or the accused intimidating the complainant.???? Besides laying traps, the ACB also investigates Disproportionate Assets, where success rates are dismal due to lack of information. Pasricha requested the public to come forward with leads, promising action as well as confidentiality for informers. Pasricha also said the ACB now has an internal vigilance cell to keep a watch on its own men. NEWS 2 BMC officials held for graft Two licence inspectors of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were arrested by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for extorting hafta from hawkers at Dadar TT. According to the BMC public relations department, ACB sleuths laid a trap at Dadar TT area and nabbed one Surajbali R Prajapati (45), while he was extorting bribes from hawkers. Surajbali's interrogation revealed that he was working as an agent of two licence officers at the G North ward office of BMC. However, the police said that the officers were yet to be arrested. Copyright ?© 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hafta or weekly bribes paid out by unlicensed hawkers amount to 25 Crores Decline of a great cityTo start with, proliferation of hawkers in Mumbai is rooted in at least two features shared by most cities: first, migrants are driven there from rural and semi-rural areas seeking a living and, second, they are victimised by the politician-local administration-police nexus, which in Mumbai also means the mafia.Let us, therefore, be clear what it is we are talking about. As in city slums, where the mainspring is not the slum dweller but the slum-lord, and with mendicants, where the key is the beggar-lord, and with polluting taxis, where the problem is really the taxi-lord or fleet owner, so with hawkers too, we must cope with hawker-lords and their connections, not just the hard-working citizen from the districts eking out an honest living. That is, a key factor in any solution will be the people who exact from the hawker a price for hawking space and for the ???right?? to that space.Hawkers are part of the informal sector of Mumbai??s economy which, as early as 1991, accounted for two-thirds of the city??s employment. The sector offers ease of entry for low-skilled workers and use of traditional technologies but low returns. It tends to operate on streets, pavements and public spaces. Here is where hawkers have come up against the BMC and residents/citizens, the latter very resentful because they are if anything even less organized than hawkers, who often have been able to put up a threatening front.Virtually all hawking takes place in unlicensed places (TISS-YUVA report. See below). Two-thirds of it is on pavements and the remaining third on the carriageways of streets and roads. Licensed hawkers make up no more than six per cent of the total. It may be time to note a significant actor in our scenario.Sharad Rao / Suresh Kapile are in some ways and seasons, the men by whose writ the city runs. He is leader of the Bombay Hawkers?? Union, the main vendor group, heads the Municipal Mazdoor Union, which regularly holds the city to ransom for better remuneration to its overpaid and inefficient members and is union kingpin among Mumbai taxis, for many the city??s only wheels. He recently demanded that Mumbai save its 300,000 hawkers from harassment and extortion at the hands of our very own ???cops and robbers??, that is, the city??s police and municipal workers.Tata Institute of Social ciences and YUVA. reports that hafta or weekly bribes paid out by unlicensed hawkers amount to a staggering Rs 3240 million annually (The Times of India, November 1997). But then, that boils down to just Rs 35 a day per hawker, if Rao??s numbers are accepted ?? in turn quite reasonable, seen against the vast business reportedly done by these folk here. It is valued at hundreds of millions annually by the National Alliance of Street Vendors.But the TISS-YUVA report puts the total number of licensed and daily fee-paying vendors at just 100,000 or a bit more. The report cautions that the following figures may represent under-reporting, but 70 per cent of them seem to earn between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000 per month. Forty per cent deal in agricultural products, which brings out their importance to the city housewife.All this was in the first half of 1998. Since then there has been proliferation through influx into the city. While nearly half the city??s hawkers are covered by no scrap of permission or paper, there is a group using the law against the law to do business, a strategy gaining currency.An interested person occupies public space, usually near or on the way to a suburban railway station, or educational institution, or place of worship, or on a railway over-bridge ?? in general in an area of profitable pedestrian traffic. If / when authorities arrive to demolish or seize things, the hawker seeks and invariably gets a ???stay?? of removal from a city civil court. The plea is that, until the BMC obeys a Supreme Court ruling of July 1985 to set up hawking and no-hawking zones, no demolition is just.Given the scale of daily graft, here then is an invitation to delay of zoning and slow motion implementation by municipal functionaries and their allies elsewhere. Nothing in fact was effectively done about hawkers between 1985 and 1998. The real problem was that hawkers were no longer hawkers at all, in the sense of being ambulant street vendors. They were taking possession of, and defending, specific pitches and areas, while in most cases living, cooking and washing there as well. Enter the Citizens?? Forum for the Protection of Public Spaces (CFPPS).CFPPS is a spin-off from another initiative, an effort to clean up Churchgate. This is an area in the vicinity of a suburban railway terminal in south Mumbai. The clean up was greatly successful but not at once obvious. Success was veiled by the sullying and health-threatening presence of some 400 hawkers, 90 per cent of them unlicensed. They also obstructed pedestrians on pavements, forcing them onto carriageways, thus posing dangers of accident and death from vehicular traffic. Their links to the underworld, often forced upon them, were numerous and open. Clearly, no clean up of the city would be possible without solving the hawker problem.CFPPS came together more than two years ago. That it was an idea whose time had come was proved by how quickly it grew. From six persons, it became 30 organizations in four weeks. Residents?? associations came together against unauthorised hawkers. It is now a network ten times larger. Its unifying goal is to fight land grab, encroachment and illegal building. In Mumbai??s narrow, crowded, sea-locked space, land is gold. A few years ago, its business and residential accommodation was the most expensive in the world. The lure of its land to miscreants is powerful.But CFPPS began as a reaction to the way unauthorised hawking had taken over streets, pavements and public space in key areas of the city and to the accompanying problems of health, hygiene, lawlessness, corruption of public officials and infiltration by criminals.The forum met regularly and there was constant consultation among members. It grew in size, strength and boldness. Here it was aided by the openness of an Additional Municipal Commissioner, V. Ramani, & Dy.M.C. Rokde C.B. The Demolition Man ,with whom regular meetings were held with the objective of including citizens in the BMC initiative vis-a-vis hawkers. The CFPPS filed a public interest litigation suit praying, in essence, that the High Court direct the BMC to implement the July 1985 Supreme Court ruling. Many residents?? associations were co-petitioners. Hawkers were also represented in court.In mid-1998, the Mayor-in-Council system was introduced in Mumbai and the Mayor, Nandu Satam, was enthusiastic in wanting to regulate hawking. Three days before hawking/no-hawking zones were meant to come into force in September 1998, the view was taken in decision making circles that adequate consultation with citizens had not taken place. Enforcement of the scheme was held up. Implementation of a scheme now awaits the Bombay High Court??s orders, expected some time in June 2000, on the prayers of the CFPPS, among others.Basically, the petitioners have urged that hawkers should be confined to ambulant vending and have no rights over the land where they pitch, that hawking and no-hawking zones shall be defined on the lines of the Supreme Court ruling of July 1985. A court order will automatically vacate the stay orders against demolition which were valid only as long there were no zones defined by the BMC/High Court.CFPPS has always made the point that it is not against hawkers as such because they provide city homes an important service. The point they stick by is the Supreme Court ruling (July 1985) that, ???Public streets are meant for use by the general public and not to facilitate the carrying on of private trade or business.?? In the same order, the apex court held that hawkers may not hold society to ransom by squatting on busy thoroughfares, thereby paralysing civic life. The municipality??s power to grant licenses is coupled with a duty to ensure that it is exercised after due consultation and in the interests of the general public which, therefore, has a stake in showing how and why the hawking trade should be regulated.The same order laid down many specific and detailed provisions, among them the following: no hawking within specified limits of railway stations, education institutions and places of worship. Hawking could only take place up to 9 pm in the case of foodstuffs. Creation of hawking and no-hawking zones was to be completed by October 1985.In a later ruling, the Supreme Court once again upheld the rights of the pedestrian over footpaths and pavements as against anybody??s right to make a living on them. Whatever the economic compulsions, public property may not be used for private purposes without requisite authorisation.In 1988, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court recognised the right of a hawker to transact business while going from place to place subject, however, to proper regulation for the convenience of the public. The right to carry on trade or business on streets or pavements was also recognised but with appropriate regulation to facilitate traffic and convenience of the travelling public. Hawkers do not have a right over a particular place to carry on trade or business.The TISS-YUVA report notes, interestingly, that about 45 per cent of hawkers are in favour of the creation of zones. But the problem is now of giant scale. As against the TISS-YUVA census of 100,000 hawkers and Sharad Rao??s estimate of 300,000 brethren, there are only some 25,000 licensed vendors. AMC Ramani had calculated that there could be no more than some 50,000 hawkers accommodated in the newly defined zones, and that was some time ago. What is to happen of the remaining traders on the city??s streets?It is a familiar tactic of operators on the fringe of legality to enlarge the proportions of their misdemeanour to complicate and delay solution. This has happened in the case of illegal building and land-grabbing in Mumbai, now a huge, nearly intractable problem; with vehicular pollution from malfunctioning diesel engines and adulterated fuel, something in which tens of thousands of vehicles are now involved. It has happened with our hawkers. Many of them, the licensed ones and perhaps some others, are victims, along of course with several lakh citizens.The thought in the minds of many, among them the PIL litigants themselves, is, ???After the High Court ruling, what??? Who will enforce whatever it is that the court orders? The record of the BMC and the city police (which has a body of policemen dedicated to the BMC??s tasks) has not been a good one over the years. Clearly, the citizens?? duty cannot cease with the court order.This at least may be said: the " Citizens?? Forum for Protection of Public Spaces " has made a public issue of the need to regulate hawking. Scores of residents?? associations, which means thousands of members, are aware of the problem where once there was ignorance or apathy. They also know what can and cannot be done by particular public authorities. The media have been sensitized. Municipal ward offices and their functionaries and, most importantly, the venal fixers who once operated without qualm or hindrance are now on notice.There is some evidence that the vast ship of (local) state is slowly veering a few degrees. Hopefully it will steer clear of the icebergs ahead. --------------------------------------------------------- Hawkers: Need to get corporates , citizens & shop / Traders Associations into the loop How does the average Indian, living in crowded metropolitan cities, react to the teeming hawkers who hog public spaces such as pavements, roads, railway over bridges. etc? Well, the eternally busy Mumbaikars usually regard them as a useful nuisance that allows them to rush about their business without missing a beat. They grumble exasperatedly about the hawking menace but continue to use their services. Increasingly, however, citizens' groups have begun to react to the corruption in municipal corporations, which has led to rampant encroachment of public spaces. They want hawkers to be licensed and restricted to specified hawking zones and to create a balance between their rights as tax-paying citizens and those of hawkers to earn a living. Given that hawking has sometimes turned into a menace, the citizens' groups have had to turn increasingly strident against the combination of corruption and 'vote-bank politics', which combine to prevent reform and re-organisation. This is clearly one area where the concept of forging public-private partnerships which enable government and business to work together for the public good. ************************************* Implement Hawking / Non-hawking scheme in Mumbai.=== The Supreme Court, in it??s order delivered on 30.7.2004, has come down heavily on the Mumbai Municipal Corporation (MMC) and the Police for ???dilly-dallying??? on the implementation of its earlier order passed 7 months back, whereby they were to expeditiously implement the hawking / Non-hawking scheme to discipline and relocate the licensed hawkers in pre-determined 196 zones in the city and to evict the every other hawker from it??s streets, footpaths and other open spaces. It appears to be a miserable failure of the law-enforcing machinery which otherwise has been vested with abundant powers to tackle the situation. It??s hard to believe that the combined strength of the MMC and the Mumbai Police is incapable of putting things in order. If these two powerful authorities cannot deliver results then who can ? The rampant and widespread existance of unauthorized hawkers is the most visible sign of the violation of the law and yet what we get to see is a game of hide-and-seek between the hawkers and the law-enforcers whenever evictions take place. The law-enforcers who carry out this cursory ???evictions??? of the hawkers, who in any case have been pre-warned and given enough time to run away and hide their wares, confiscate a few bakadas, fill-up their record book about the details of this ???eviction??? and then happily return to the base till the next round of this sham which they wish us to believe is the ???eviction drive???. Such action makes a mockery of the law not to mention the colossal waste of the hard earned public money in carrying out these eviction drives which otherwise could have been used to provide better infrastructure, improving educational facilities in Municipal Schools, better management of solid waste, preventing the spread of deadly diseases, controlling crime etc. Prior to the SC order, the usual excuse dished out by the BMC and the Police alike was that ?????¦ there is a stay order of the lower courts??? or ?????¦the matter is in the SC so we are helpless and our hands are tied??? but now what excuse do they have for their inactivity ? This case has been shuttling between the SC and the High Court since the past 19 years and yet nothing has moved an inch except for the fact that the number of unauthorized hawkers have increased exponentially our streets, footpaths and other open spaces in connivance with the law-enforcers. If despite the clear-cut directives from the SC, and a tripartite committee (comprising of a retired Sessions Court Judge, a senior BMC officer and a senior Police officer) being in place to implement the hawking / non-hawking zone scheme, the law-enforcers are found wanting then it??s just as well that the Police Commissioner and the Municipal accept defeat and resign from their posts and let the army take over. This surely is setting a very bad precedent. If the powerful Mumbai Police and the Municipal Corporation could not take on the hawker mafia then what action can be expected against other serious offenders like the gun-runners, the extortionists, anti-national elements, white-collar scamsters and the drug mafias ? It certainly would embolden them to commit crimes with impunity thus leading to a total collapse of the law & order machinery. Ultimately it??s the poor law abiding and tax paying citizen who would have to bear the brunt of this break-down of the civilian order. The concerned powers-that-be must, without further delay, start implementing the SC orders and open-up our open spaces in the interest of the general public. Even after all the years of litigation, and continued censures to the MCGM and its officers by the Supreme Court, in the matter of the Hawking / Non Hawking Zones for Mumbai, it appears that MCGM, its adminitrative and police officers are pretty much non chalant about following Supreme Court judgements and orders. Forget lip service, its virtual defiance, ever since 1985, till date. Supposedly the latest Supreme Court orders on implementation of the zones were to commence 2004 AUG 02, with the necessary encroachment teams, including police patrols for the full day. Has anyone seen this happen? The hawkers themselves are a bit hesitant, but nevertheless openly do their business, particularly the food vendors, who are among the completely banned categories. The MCGM van comes around, the hawkers chat up with the in charge, and off goes the van. If this is not blatant contempt of court, and mutiny against the supremacy of the judiciary, then, We, the People of India, that is, Bharat, are in for bad times. Today, its a sad reflection of where our administrators and authorities have reached. Thank you. WE CAN CARE, IF WE DARE. (Madhu Sawant) (Dinanath Chouhan) & Other citizens in Mumbai ----------------------------------------------------------------- * Published for evaluation and information purposes. * The contents of the article are the ideas of it's author and have not been verified by the moderator. the.moderator |
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