The Paradox of Progress and Stagnation: Case of Street Vending in India

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 promised the street vendors of India legal recognition, designated vending zones, and participatory governance through Town Vending Committees. Certificates of Vending have been issued. Committees have been formed. Rules have been framed. Yet a decade later, vendors across Indian cities continue to operate in a state of precarious uncertainty, where legal documents offer little protection against arbitrary removal, political capture, and systemic exclusion. The law exists. The space, in practice, does not. This is not simply a failure of implementation, but a deeper disconnect between what is written and what is lived, between recognition on paper and security on the street. 

The Certificate That Protects Nothing

At Yashwant Place market in Delhi, vendors – who wish to remain anonymous – showed their certificates of vending with a mixture of pride and resignation. ‘Iska kya fayeda sir…Certificate waalo ko bhi waese hata te hai jaese bina certificate waale…’(There is no benefit to this sir… They evict us as if we don’t have the certificates…). These were official documents, stamped and signed, theoretically guaranteeing their right to occupy designated spaces. Yet these same vendors described being arbitrarily removed from their spots, excluded from renewal surveys meant to update their records, and sidelined from decision-making processes despite some even serving as members of the Town Vending Committee. Here was the paradox at its clearest: legal recognition without the realisation of recognised rights, spatial security and participation without power, rights without enforcement. 

Spatial security extends beyond the mere allocation of physical space and encompasses the conditions under which marginalised populations can claim and secure their right to place within the city in lieu of Article 19(1)(g). In the context of street vending, it addresses the fundamental question of, ‘what does it mean for the state to recognise a vendor’s right to practise their profession if that recognition cannot be translated into actual, secure occupancy of urban space?’ The Street Vendors Act, 2014 attempted to answer this by establishing a framework for spatial allocation through certificates of vending, town vending committees and designated vending among others. 

Yet spatial security requires more than legal designation. It demands that the right to place be enforceable, that once designated, a vendor’s spatial claim cannot be undermined by administrative whim or political convenience. It requires that the institutions meant to protect spatial claims remain independent from those who might violate them. When these conditions are absent, as the evidence from Delhi suggests, spatial security becomes a concept that exists only on paper. The vendor possesses a Certificate but not security. They have a designated location but no guarantee of access to it. They occupy a legal category but cannot inhabit the space that category supposedly protects. 

The certificate is supposed to be proof of legitimacy. But legitimacy, it turns out, depends less on what the law says and more on who controls the space where vendors operate.

Jaipur: Between Court Orders and Political Capture

The Centre for Civil Society has worked with street vendors in Jaipur since 2011, and launched the Jeevika App in the city in 2024 to provide legal awareness and free legal aid to vendors navigating an increasingly complex regulatory environment. What we collectively realised was a system caught between formal progress and practical stagnation.

Banwari Ji, a dosa and pav bhaji vendor near Collector Circle, serving as the leader of Heritage City Thadi Thela Union, Jaipur has emerged  as a a leader in Jaipur’s vending community. Over tea at his stall, he walked us through the systemic failures that define vendor life in the city. Major vending areas remain without officially notified zones, more than a decade after the national law mandated their designation. Vendors hold identity cards issued by the Jaipur Nagar Nigam, but not the certificates of vending that would give them legal standing. Survey timings remain unfixed. Officers transfer frequently, disrupting any continuity in implementation.

But the deeper problem Banwari Ji described goes beyond bureaucratic inertia. Certain groups, he explained, leverage political connections and relationships with municipal officers to forcibly occupy prime vending spaces. They then rent these spaces out to vendors, creating an informal rental market that operates entirely outside the law and undermines the Town Vending Committee’s authority. The 2014 Act envisioned democratic governance and spatial justice. What has emerged instead is a system where access to urban space depends not on legal entitlement but on patronage, payments, and proximity to power. Even after the countless legal redressals undertaken by Banwari ji, his notable wins remain partial. The broader implementation remains hollow, the rules on paper disconnected from the reality vendors navigate every day.

The Politics of Space

What these experiences reveal is a fundamental tension in how we approach urban governance. Street vending regulation is often framed as a technical problem requiring better policies, clearer procedures, more efficient administration. But at its core, it is a question of power. Who controls urban space? Whose claims to the city are recognized as legitimate? When vendors are removed despite holding valid certificates, when zones remain unnotified despite legal mandates, when political actors capture spaces meant for collective use, the issue is not implementation failure. It is the reassertion of older hierarchies that never accepted vendors as rightful claimants to public space.

The 2014 Act represented genuine progress. It acknowledged street vending as a legitimate livelihood, not a nuisance to be eliminated. It created mechanisms for vendor participation and spatial justice. These were  significant changes. Yet the persistence of arbitrary evictions, survey exclusions, and rent-seeking arrangements suggests that formal legal change is only one dimension of a much larger struggle.

Rights without enforcement become symbolic gestures. Participation without decision-making power becomes performative inclusion. Certificates without spatial security are reduced to mere pieces of paper. 

What Changes, What Remains

As we reflect on conversations with Banwari Ji, the vendors at Yashwant Place, and others across these cities, what strikes me is the gap between regulatory intent and lived experience where the fundamental insecurity persists. Vendors still wake up uncertain whether their spot will be available tomorrow. They still navigate informal power structures to secure space. They still face removal without due process, despite the protections the law supposedly guarantees.

The vendors we met do not need better policies. They need the ones that already exist to actually work. They need vending zones to be notified, not promised. They need Town Vending Committees with real authority, not advisory bodies easily bypassed. They need certificates that protect them from arbitrary eviction, not documents that sit in their pockets while political actors decide who can sell where.

Perhaps the real lesson is that changing regulations is necessary but never sufficient. Without genuine enforcement, meaningful participation, and a political commitment to recognizing vendors as legitimate urban actors entitled to space and dignity, laws remain aspirational documents rather than tools for transformation.