backward acting and forward-thinking

India may be a country on the move, but not for street vendors, as this editorial in The Hindu shows:

The recent national consultation on urban street vending has made it clear, despite four decades of struggle, that hawkers and mobile vendors still find Indian cities reluctant to include them. While cities are willing to accommodate on-street car parking, they view handcarts used for vending and providing services on roads as a hindrance.

The paper complains that "cities such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad pursuing irrational cut-off lines which bar a large number of vendors from getting a licence" and, in what might be a first for a major publication, urges the central government to work with the country's more than 10 million street vendors. Let's hope the politicians listen.