The pavements in Gariahat are looking cleaner and wider, with sunlight playing on the footpath and shops visible from the road.
The new look, which a shop owner said he was seeing for the first time since he purchased his shop in 1998, has pleasantly surprised many visitors to the shopping hub.
The hawkers have removed plastic sheets and restricted the size of their stalls, leaving room for pedestrians. All the stalls are now arranged in a manner that they do not go beyond a demarcated line.
With no plastic sheet covering the entire width of the footpath, sunlight is falling on the pavement. The stretches that looked like dimly-lit tunnel even in the afternoon are now baking in sunlight.
Many, however, are apprehensive about how long the current phase will last. They fear the plastic sheets will return.
“I purchased this shop in 1998. Since then I have never seen Gariahat this clean. Customers often complained that they could not locate my shop. No one could see the name of my shop from the road. The board with the shop’s name is now visible from the road,” said the owner of a clothes store near the Gariahat crossing.
There are over 1,200 hawkers on the pavements around Gariahat: along Rashbehari Avenue and Gariahat Road.
All of them hung plastic sheets over their stalls and tied the sheets to the buildings in front. This stopped sunlight and air from flowing freely and the pavements were dark and claustrophobic.
There are stretches of the pavement that are 24ft or 21ft wide, but a pedestrian barely realised that before.
A hawker leader said that the pavement outside Select Stores — the southern footpath going towards Golpark from Gariahat — is 24ft wide. A visit to the stretch showed that the stall sizes have shrunk and wide, open space has been created on the pavement.
The state government has framed hawking rules that bar the use of plastic sheets. The rules also state that hawkers can occupy one-third width of a pavement and have to leave two-thirds empty. No stall or portion of a stall can encroach on the road and no stall can be built facing a road.
The town vending committee of Kolkata has allowed hawkers to build overhead tin shades in place of plastic sheets.
The committee, which is made up of police, government officials, hawkers and elected representatives, has been empowered to regulate hawking in the city by the Street Vending (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.
“Things look much better now but I fear whether this will remain for long. What will happen during monsoon?” asked a Gariahat resident.
Debashis Kumar, mayoral council member in charge of the parks and squares department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), said that the overhead shades and panels on the back will give enough protection to the stalls.
“If they face a problem, we will decide then. But it seems to me the overhead shade and the panels on the back will protect the stalls from the rain,” Kumar said.
Architect Abin Chaudhuri, who has designed many public spaces in Kolkata, said that the KMC can think about graffiti or even display advertisements on the back of stalls.
“The back of stalls can be used in multiple ways. The advertisements will earn revenue for the KMC. Well-made graffiti can lift the look of the place. They can be done very aesthetically,” he said.
Kumar said he hoped that the pavements in Gariahat will become a model that will be then adopted in other places in Kolkata that have hawkers on the footpath.