Jo-burg jive

Johannesburg is going after street hawkers, as this article reports. But note the language: Who can be against 'clean up' and 'order.' Meanwhile the municipality is putting thousands of families in jeopardy and crushing the traditional life of the city.

ht wiego

economic inspiration

What gives its special quality and character, its toughness and cohesion, to the industrial system built up in the last century and a-half, is not its exploded theory of economic harmonies. It is the doctrine that economic rights are anterior to, and independent of, economic functions.

--R.H. Tawney

The fact that two people exchange their products is by no means simply an economic fact. Such a fact -- that is, one whose content would be exhausted in the image that economics presents of it -- does not exist.

--Georg Simmel

Wealth is like muck. It is not good but it be spread.

--Francis Bacon

I do not deny that modern economic theory can make a contribution to running a household, or a village, or a region, or even the entire world -- though such a denial would at all be unrealistic. What I do deny is that modern economic theory can replace the traditional ways without any loss of information or quality of life.

--Paul Feyerabend

Nothing, however profitable, goes on forever.

--C.L.R. James

Between things there exist bonds of mutual aid hampered by man.

--Martín Adán

No man can save himself alone.

--Simone de Beauvoir

the living part of the culture

Politics always puts forward Ideas: Nation, Empire, Union, Economy, etc. But none of these forms has value in itself; it has it only insofar as it involves concrete individuals. If a nation can assert itself proudly only to the detriment of its members, if a union can be created only to the detriment of those it is trying to unite, the nation or the union must be rejected.

--Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

And, I would add, if an economy can assert itself only to the detriment of the whole of the society it is designed to assist, that economy must be rejected.

The philosopher Paul Feyerabend identified the problem in his agreeably anarchic book Against Method (excerpt here):

People all over the world have developed ways of surviving in partly dangerous, party agreeable surroundings.The stories they told and the activities they engaged in enriched their lives, protected them and gave them meaning. The 'progress of knowledge and civilization' -- as the process of pushing Western ways and values into all corners of the globe is being called -- destroyed these wonderful products of human ingenuity and compassion without a single glance in their direction.

Indeed, it seems to me that our economic goals should be retooled along the lines of what Charles Newman identified in his posthumously published novel, In Partial Disgrace: "to extract money from the real economy and cheerfully redistribute it into the inefficient, living part of the culture."

the impeccable logic of development ...

... comes at the very end of this article on India's huge informal economy from The Hindu. Given the continued growth of System D in India, even in an era of unprecedented total economic growth,

It must be the case that there are many areas where the informal sector is not only not in competition with the formal sector, but actually services its requirements....In the process low wages in the informal economy help sustain profits in the formal sector. Only when this possibility is taken into account can we explain the size and scope of India’s informal economy.

After all that's been written about informality in the four decades since Keith Hart coined the term in 1973, shouldn't this be the start of any analysis rather than the tentative conclusion.

the media menace

The bus seems to have enough space, and the lane of tuk-tuks and motorcycles doesn't seem unduly compressed. So how is this street market in Kalamboli, a major transportation hub of Navi Mumbai, in suburban Bombay, a 'menace,' as DNAindia reports?

This editorial attitude is typical of much of the news coverage of street hawkers in India. The photo suggests that there are more shoppers at this bustling transit transfer point than there are merchants -- but nonetheless, the dominant narrative is that the merchants constitute a 'menace.'

The bias exhibited by newspapers and media outlets is the real menace.

Street hawkers naturally gravitate to locations where shoppers are. That's not a menace. Indeed, you might argue it's a public service.

if you build it in the wrong place, they won't come

A dozen years ago, the city of Mumbai spent $4.8 million to build a mall that it thought would allow it to get rid of hawkers near the Dadar train station. But it forgot that street hawking is governed by the same three principles that govern real estate: location, location, location. The new market was far too far from the station for customers to flock to.

As one sensible street vendor told DNAIndia: “I have been carrying on my business from this spot (near the station) for 25 years. I have observed that people get out from the station and shop before going home. Who will go all the way to Plaza Market?”

The news agency reports that the market building is mostly vacant while the streets around the station are as thronged as ever.

More proof that cities must work with street vendors, not against them.

finally, rights on paper!

The Street Vendors Bill that passed the Lok Sabha (India's lower house of parliament) in early September, is a major step in the ongoing battle for dignity and recognition of the validity of informal workers. Sharit Bhowmik, who has studied the plight of the vendors, who are routinely abused by authorities and in the press, terms it "a landmark piece of legislation for the urban poor." Novelist Chandrahas Choudhury salutes street vendors as "the stars of India's vast informal economy -- those without contracts, social security or employer benefits -- inhabited by more than 80 percent of the country's 450 million workforce."

As with all grand policy frameworks, though, what's important is how the Street Vendors Bill will be implemented. For instance, the law suggests that street hawkers will need to register with the Town Vending Committee before they start selling, and apply for a vending certificate "that will be issued based on various criteria." Of course, it's easy to imagine how local politicians could use these rules and criteria to make life more difficult for vendors.

Let's all keep on this and follow the local implementation of this groundbreaking bill.