The encroachment of hawkers and street vendors on the pavements of Calcutta and some of its roads has long been an acute, if not dangerous, inconvenience. Operation Sunshine, the 1996 hawker eviction drive under the Communist Party of India (Marxist) government, missed its target; even the mild rules set by the former mayor when the traders were allowed to come back were ignored. The political dimension of the problem has predominated, making civic order, road safety and the city’s looks less important. Hawkers comprise a strong lobby and their votes are welcomed. Allied to this is the issue of livelihood for the sellers and conveniently competitive prices and immediate access for the buyers. There is more, of course, as was pointed out by the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, when she announced a month’s postponement of the recently planned hawker eviction drive. Ms Banerjee put down the proliferation of stalls and illegal structures for storing goods to the complicity of the police and local political leaders. Hawkers pay to get — and keep — their spot; the chief minister said that the councillor in whose area hawkers were seen to have been given space illegally would be penalised.

Ms Banerjee seems to be walking a tightrope. If alleged corruption, unemployment and the absence of industry were reasons for urban West Bengal’s growing distance from her party, as the Lok Sabha election results suggested, then razing illegal stalls with bulldozers may lose her a huge bloc of voters from among the less well-off. A month’s postponement in response to the hawkers’ request allowed her to reassure them that their livelihoods would not be torn away; relocation, as for the Park Circus market hawkers, could be planned and the issues sorted out. Yet West Bengal’s rules for hawkers, based on a Central law, are clear and sensible. No hawker can occupy the street but only one-third of the pavements. They cannot use inflammable material such as tarpaulin for shelter, block entrances or exits of shops and houses or disrupt movement close to schools, colleges or hospitals. A town vending committee is compulsory; it issues licences, penalises traders violating the rules and lists vending and no-vending zones. Following these rules would have saved everyone pain, had politics in general and the greed for ‘collections’ in particular not got in the way.