Street Hawkers Research Articles

A New Delhi every day: multiplicities of governance regimes in a transforming metropolis

In this article I demonstrate the coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes in Delhi, India. While formal urban governance is geared toward transforming Delhi into a “world-class” city, I present original research that shows how the everyday governance of urban space in three very different areas of Delhi is determined by relations among non-state actors. These regimes foster access to space for street hawkers on an everyday basis while they allow powerful local interest groups to collect rent and influence flows of people and commodities. I argue that, in contrast to formal electoral politics, these governance regimes emerge from a parallel politics of everyday interactions, negotiations, and transgressions. Although the emancipatory potential of these regimes should not be overstated, they do offer street hawkers limited contingency to improve their access to urban space. This article contributes to a growing body of work on urban governance by showing how multiplicities of governance regimes coexist and determine how and by whom urban space is used in a metropolis in the global South.

Effectiveness of a “Whole of Chain” Approach in Linking Farmers to Market: A Case of Pakistan Mango Market

Mango is the second major fruit crop in Pakistan. The domestic retail market for mango in Pakistan is dominated by small retail shops, street hawkers, and road side stalls. The fruit sold in these retail outlets is prescribed by the traditional quality standards of size, appearance and price. However the growth of superior outlets/supermarkets chain especially in the major cities are setting additional quality standards such as blemish free, improved packaging, prestige, convenience to deliver premium quality mangoes. Similarly the export market is mainly targeted to the expatriate Pakistani consumers rather than quality conscious foreign consumers. This is because of inadequate market information and understanding all along the chain. A whole of chain approach is undertaken to improve the market understanding in an ACIAR project. Since the approach is new, a conceptual framework is developed in order to asses the effectiveness of the approach. The results indicate that the participants all along the chain would change their practices if they find the compelling reason to change in their existing businesses.

Producing and contesting the formal/informal divide: Regulating street hawking in Delhi, India

There is a consensus that urban development schemes in India bear little resemblance to the well-thought-out plans of their genesis, and that the boundary between formal/informal is often blurry. I seek to contribute to this literature by showing how, in spite of efforts to implement a regulatory scheme, street hawking in Delhi remains highly informal and in a state of negotiated (im)permanence. I compare two recent conflicts over street hawkers’ use of public space, which demonstrate that power is dispersed across a range of sites and rests with a number of state and non-state actors. I argue that preconceived notions of ‘formality’ and ‘informality’ are of little value in understanding urban processes, and instead it is necessary to understand how the boundary between formal/informal is produced and contested both juridically and through everyday practices of enforcement and evasion/subversion.

Analysis of the Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Street Hawking: A Case Study of the Accra Metropolitan Area

To the street hawker, it is a means of making a living but to the managers of the metropolis, street hawking is a menace. These differences in perception have led to a game plan tied to spatio-temporal diurnal traffic regimes. While the city authorities plan may be to evict the street hawkers, the plan of the hawkers is to outwit the city authorities through make-shift hawking patterns in order to make a living. The difference in the two positions can be characterized by the city manager’s need for clean and less congested city streets, and the hawker’s desire to sell wares at locations that maximize income. The factors contributing to street hawking include traffic congestion, profitability, the lack of employable skills and minimal-capital entry requirement into the hawking trade. While the city needs proper spatial planning in the long run, in the short term, city managers and hawkers must develop a relationship that considers public perceptions and the use of public space to make the Accra metropolitan area livable. This calls for new approaches that address the aesthetic and open space needs while at the same time meeting the socio-economic and survival needs of city dwellers and new immigrants.

Sexual Characteristics and Knowledge ofAdolescent Hawkers about HIV/AIDS in Ilorin, Nigeria

Introduction: Adolescent street hawkers working in the informal sector in Nigeria are becoming increasingly exposed to the risk of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. The objective of this study is to determine the sexual characteristics and knowledge of hawkers concerning HIV/AIDS. Methodology: This study is a descriptive cross – sectional survey carried out in Ilorin among adolescent hawkers aged 11 – 19 years. All adolescent hawkers in six selected auto-parks and markets in Ilorin were recruited until the desired sample size of 312 respondents was obtained. The sample size was determined using Fischer’s Formula. Semi-structured, pre-tested interviewer – administered questionnaire was used for data collection and entered into Epi-Info computer software for analysis. Frequency tables and cross-tabulation of variables were done and P-value <0.05 was used to determine statistical significance. Result: All the respondents have heard about HIV/AIDS. About half of the hawkers (48.8%) knew the causative agents of HIV/AIDs while 83.4% demonstrated correct knowledge in ways of contracting the infection. Almost all the hawkers 309 (97%) had not gone for HIV/AIDS test. Hawkers that have ever had sexual intercourse were 31.9%. Of those that had sexual intercourse, 24.5% ever used condom. Of those that used condom, 24.0% used it always while 76.0% do not use it always. Conclusion & Recommendations: Unprotected adolescent sexual intercourse is high among hawkers, with a background low HIV screening status. There is need for a societal re-orientation on the hazards of hawking as it relates to sexual hazards. There is need to carry out health education intervention on the causes and ways to prevent HIV/AIDS among the hawkers to bridge the knowledge gap.

The Making of “World-Class” Delhi: Relations Between Street Hawkers and the New Middle Class

Urban India is undergoing transformation as formal electoral politics increasingly favors the new middle class. Scholarship tends to compartmentalize the politics of the new middle class and the poor, and this article focuses on inter-class relations. By focusing on relations between street hawkers and the new middle class in Delhi, I show that rather than engaging in zero-sum conflicts over urban space, conflict is typically over the terms of its use. The analysis shows that these classes are interdependent; the poor depend on the new middle class for their livelihoods, and the lifestyles of new middle class are enabled by services provided by the poor. While the poor enable and participate in Delhi's transformation into a so-called “world-class” city, the reconciliation of competing visions of urbanization—one geared toward social reproduction and the other subsistence—is what is at stake in contemporary inter-class relations.

Household Solid Waste Generation in Urban Pakistan: A Case Study of Rawalpindi

Nowhere else in Pakistan is the urban rot more pronounced than in the waste-littered streets. Apart from being an eyesore, ill-managed solid waste in Pakistan is one of the primary causes of health and environmental problems, which costs the state and individual households hundreds of millions of rupees in healthcare costs and lost productivity. This paper focuses on the determinants of household solid waste generation in Rawalpindi Cantonment. Relying on a survey of economically-differentiated 118 households in six urban neighbourhoods, this paper has found substantial differences in household waste generation rates across various income groups. As expected, high-income neighbourhood residents generated more waste than their mid- and low-income counterparts. The total waste generated by household increased with household size. However, the waste per capita declined with the increase in the household size. The state of solid waste collection was found to be poor across all income strata. The two low-income and one mid-income neighbourhood did not have any municipal waste collection service. Fewer than 50% of the households in the high-income neighbourhood reported access to municipal solid waste collection service. The rest self-disposed household solid waste mostly in empty lots in the neighbourhood. More than 65% of the households sold recyclables to waste collecting street hawkers, while another 25% handed recyclables to domestic workers, who in turn sold recyclables in the market.

Assessment of cancer and noncancer health risks from exposure to PAHs in street dust in the Tamale Metropolis, Ghana

This study is part of a broader initiative to characterize, quantify and assess the human health risk associated with exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in street dust along the Trans-ECOWAS highway in West Africa. In the first part, PAHs were characterized and quantified in low- and high-traffic zones. In this study, cancer and noncancer human health risks from exposure to (PAHs) in street dust in the Tamale metropolis, Ghana were assessed in accordance with the USEPA risk assessment guidelines. The results of the study as obtained from inhalation of benzo [a] anthracene (BaA), benzo [a] pyrene (BaP), benzo [k] fluoranthene (BkF) and chrysene via central tendency exposure parameters (CTE) by trespassers (street hawkers including children and adults) in street dust within low traffic zones in the Tamale metropolis are 1.6E-02, 4.7E-02, 1.8E-03, and 1.6E-04 respectively. For reasonable maximum exposure parameters (RME), risk values of 1.2E-01, 3.5E-01, 1.3E-02 and 1.2E-03 respectively were obtained for benzo [a] anthracene, benzo [a] pyrene, benzo [k] fluoranthene and chrysene. Hazard index for acenaphthene, anthracene, fluoranthene, fluorine, naphthalene and pyrene in the CTE and RME scenarios were 2.2, 3.E-01, 2.6, 2.6, 100, 38 and 12, 1.7,15, 14, 550, 210 respectively. Generally, the cancer health risk associated with inhalation of benzo [a] anthracene, benzo [a] pyrene, benzo [k] fluoranthene and chrysene revealed that resident adults and children in the Tamale metropolis are at risk from exposure to these chemicals. The results of this preliminary assessment that quantified PAH related health risks along this part of the Trans-ECOWAS highway revealed that, there is the need for regulatory agencies to put in comprehensive measures to mitigate the risks posed to these categories of human receptors.

Beyond entrepreneurs as heroic icons of capitalist society: a case study of street entrepreneurs in India

The starting point of this paper is the recognition that the entrepreneurship literature is dominated by a normative ideologically-driven depiction of the entrepreneur as a heroic icon and symbolic figurehead of capitalist culture. The aim of this paper is to directly and intentionally challenge this dominant depiction by reporting the findings of a 2010 survey of 871 street entrepreneurs in the Indian city of Bangalore to reveal not only how street hawkers are as much engaged in entrepreneurial endeavour as the revered heroic figures normally associated with entrepreneurship, but also how this is not a weak, necessity-driven, transient and disappearing form of entrepreneurship, but resilient, opportunity-driven and persistent. The outcome is a call to transcend the ideal-type depiction of entrepreneurs as heroic iconic figures and for a more lived practice approach that recognises and values the prevalence of other (and ‘othered’) forms of entrepreneurship across the globe.

Ethics in Business: Practices by the Street Hawkers’

Street markets are one of the most exciting trends in Malaysia’s act as an alternative for small-time traders to sell their goods in the evenings. This paper examines the factors behind the unethical business practices by the street hawkers in Malaysia. The research methodology adapted in this research with using a descriptive study from the hawkers of various street markets in Kuala Lumpur area in Malaysia where 150 respondents were surveyed under five traders category for instance pirated CD, shoes, vegetables, food, fish and meat. To test the hypothesis this research utilized multiple regressions. The result shows unethical behavior of street hawkers highly influenced by lack of religious foundation followed by their limited income, greediness, personal biases, lack of integrity. Findings derived from this study would enable the reader to understand the types of unethical practices and reason behind the practices by the street hawkers in Malaysia which was previously unexplored under this area.

A importância do sector informal na economia urbana em países da África Subsariana

In this paper, presented as a tribute to CARLOS ALBERTO MEDEIROS, the author begins by evoking some of the most important moments in the brilliant academic career of his former student and collaborator, as well as the feelings of mutual friendship and respect that bind the two. The subject of the importance of the informal sector in the urban economy of Sub-Saharan African countries is then addressed in two parts – 1. On the informal nature and informality of the urban economy; and 2. On the multi-segmentation of the informal sector –, which are followed by a Conclusion. The result of many years of careful reflection and analysis, based on field observation, countless literature surveys and exchanges of knowledge with other specialists from the social sciences, this paper is actually an early version of part of a book currently under preparation, and is offered as such as a gift accompanying this tribute. The first part of the paper begins with a reflection on the expression ‘informal sector’ (for long in current usage) and others still being used, as well on the validity of the formal/informal dicotomy as an analytical instrument, and proceeds by presenting examples of the differences between these two sectors (Table I), their inter-relationships, the existence of hybrid forms and some data on the importance and expansion of the informal sector, which is responsible for ensuring the livelihood of most city inhabitants. The second part focuses on the myriad activities and small-scale individual, family and even ‘firm-like’ businesses and trades that bring the streets and markets to life. Street hawkers and producers, among whom the women play a central role, predominate, many of whom are newcomers to the city that have just arrived from the countryside, or from abroad in the case of the immigrants (Table II). According to another author (Table III), it is particularly difficult to create a taxonomy of these multiple micro-activities, and to draw a clear-cut distinction between formal and informal activities. In the concluding remarks, attention is drawn to the unquestionable reality, complexity, expansion and importance of the informal sector of the urban economy. Hence the need to study it in the field while bearing in mind its wider context and to regard it as a structural feature rather than a marginal or marginalized phenomenon.

Quality of packaged drinking water produced in Warri Metropolis and potential implications for public healths

Five brands of popular packaged water produced in Warri have been screened for coliform, physical and selected chemical characteristics, including cadmium, chromium and lead for the objective of determining potability using appropriate methods. Sachets and bottled water samples were collected from production plants, wholesale outlets and street hawkers. The results were in the following range: pH, 7.1 to 8.2; Total dissolved solids (TDS), 2.26 to 89.6 mg/l; Turbidity, 0.45 to 2.55 NTU; Calcium, 0.11 to 1.21 mg/l; Magnesium, 0.03 to 0.31 mg/l; Sulphate, 0 to 1.21 mg/l; chloride, 0.5 to 3.1 mg/l; nitrate, 0.2 to 0.25 mg/l. Cadmium was detected in three brands in both sachets and bottles and ranged from 0.001 to 0.002 mg/l. Lead detected ranged from 0.001 to 0.003 mg/l and chromium: 0.001 to 0.002 mg/l. While all parameters are well below regulatory guidelines, attention is drawn to the predominantly low Total dissolved solids (TDS) which indicates that the packaged water in Warri is demineralized. Prolonged consumption of demineralized water has been shown from elsewhere to result in micronutrient deficiencies, especially in calcium and magnesium that have been associated with high incidence of ailments including, dieresis, hypertension and coronary heart disease among others. Cohort-epidemiological studies are recommended in Warri and environs where packaged water is the most important drinking water source in order to establish any such health related linkages. Study results would guide water supply policy and regulatory action. Key words: Packaged water, low TDS, heavy metals, public health, Warri, water policy.

Evaluating Competing Theorisations of Informal Entrepreneurship: A Study of India's Street Hawkers

This paper evaluates critically the competing explanations for informal entrepreneurship amongst the desperately poor that variously depict such entrepreneurs as a leftover from a previous mode of ...

Behavioural Problems of Juvenile Street Hawkers in Uyo Metropolis, Nigeria

The study sought the opinions of Faculty of Education Students of University of Uyo on the behavioural problems of juvenile street hawkers in Uyo metropolis. Five research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. This cross-sectional survey employed multi-stage random sampling technique in selecting 200 regular undergraduate students in the Education Faculty of the University of Uyo for the study. The Juvenile Street Hawkers Opinioniare (JUVSHO) developed by the researchers was used in data collection. The hypotheses were tested using chi square statistic at p≤.05 level of significance and appropriate degrees of freedom. Results indicate that juvenile street hawkers develop maladjusted patterns of behaviour, which in turn impair their academic, moral, social, physical, and psychological growth and development thus affecting their future negatively. Based on these findings, it was recommended that government should provide free basic education, improve workers remuneration, provide academic grants and aids to economically disadvantaged parents, and create jobs for unemployed parents, inter alia, in order to keep children from hawking under the guise of subsisting family income at the expense of their total development. Also, the implications of these findings for counselling psychologists in the school system were given.

Food-Borne Bacteremic Illnesses in Febrile Neutropenic Children

Bacteremia following febrile neutropenia is a serious complication in children with malignancies. Preventive measures are currently targeted at antimicrobial prophylaxis, amelioration of drug-induced neutropenia, and nosocomial spread of pathogens, with little attention to community-acquired infections. A retrospective study was conducted at a pediatric oncology center during a 3-year period to identify probable cases of food-borne infections with bacteremia. Twenty-one bacteremic illnesses affecting 15 children receiving chemotherapy or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation were reviewed. Three (14%) episodes were highly suspected of a food-borne origin: a 17-year-old boy with osteosarcoma contracted Sphingomonas paucimobilis septicemia after consuming nasi lemak bought from a street hawker; a 2-year-old boy with acute lymphoblastic leukemia developed Chryseobacterium meningosepticum septicemia after a sushi dinner; a 2-year-old girl was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Lactobacillus bacteremia suspected to be of probiotic origin. All of them were neutropenic at the time of the infections and the bacteremias were cleared with antibiotic treatment. Food-borne sepsis may be an important, but readily preventable, cause of bloodstream infections in pediatric oncology patients, especially in tropical countries with an abundance of culinary outlets.

Symptoms of psychopathology among street hawkers in Enugu Metropolis Nigeria

The study investigated the incidence of of psychopathology among street hawkers in Enugu metropolis, capital of Enugu State, Nigeria. 200 randomly drawn participants aged between 12 and 17 years, made of 100 hawkers (50 male and 50 female) as the experimental group and 100 non-hawkers (50 male and 50 female) as the control were measured on Awaritefe Psychological Index form C. This is a 51 item personality inventory designed to screen psychopathological symptoms in normal population and has a positive correlation coefficient of .49 at P. < 05 with Maudsley Personality Inventory. The hawkers were drawn from four major layouts namely New Haven, Obiagu, Abakpa- Nike and Uwani all in Enugu while the non-hawkers were senior secondary 1, 2 & 3 students of University of Nigeria Secondary School Enugu Campus. Results showed a significant difference, P< .001, between hawkers and non-hawkers in manifestation of psychopathology but this did not differ according to gender. The implications of the findings were discussed.

Integration of an Informal Economy with the Globalization Process: A Study on Street Hawkers of Kolkata

A survey on Kolkata street hawkers, spread over three different zones of KMC, was done, around 2004, by a group of social activists. Using a structured questionnaire, feedback on twenty one socio economic parameters were collected from a convenient sample of 2306 stationary hawkers. This paper presents and tries to analyze the findings of the survey in the broader perspective of a changing global economy, especially in the context of the mounting power of transnational retailing activities. The study concludes with the observation that the global capital, searching desperately for new avenues to get out of recession, has realized that fortune lie ‘at the bottom of the pyramid’. Capital, for its own survival, has become very aggressive and every economic space, however small and informal it might be, is being invaded by it. The process of integration of local informal economies, like the hawker economy, with the global monopoly capital has been started in a well planned manner.

Guardians of the Bourgeois City: Citizenship, Public Space, and Middle–Class Activism in Mumbai

This article examines the new phenomenon of “citizens’ groups” in contemporary Mumbai, India, whose activities are directed at making the city's public spaces more orderly. Recent scholarship on Mumbai's efforts to become a “global” city has pointed to the removal of poor populations as an instance of neoliberal governmentality as espoused by the Indian state following the “liberalization” of the economy in the early 1990s. However, in this case, it is these civil society organizations, not the state—whose functionaries in fact benefit from a certain element of unruliness on the streets—who are the agents of increased control over populations and of the rationalization of urban space. This article, based on fieldwork–based research, argues that the way in which citizens’ groups exclude poor populations from the city is more complex than a straightforward deployment of neoliberalism, and is imbricated with transnational political economic arrangements in uneven and often inconsistent ways. in particular, this article explores how civic activists in these organizations envision their role in the city, and how their activism attempts to reconfigure the nature of citizenship. for instance, civic activists consider themselves to be the stewards of the city's streets and sidewalks, and wage their battles against what they consider unruly hawkers, a corrupt state, and a complacent middle–class public. Moreover, civic activists render street hawkers’ political claims illegitimate by speaking on behalf of the abstract “citizen”of Mumbai, thus implying that hawkers’ unions speak only on behalf of the vested interests of a single population. in this way, they mobilize a normative notion of civil society in order to exclude the vast segment of city residents who either sell or buy goods on the street. in doing so, the civic activists transform the discourse and practice of politics in the city, so that, ironically, while on one hand using the rhetoric of citizen participation, they in fact undermine the radically heterogeneous forms of democratic political participation the city offers.

The nature of informal food bazaars: Empirical results for Urban Hanoi, Vietnam

This paper aims to study the interesting phenomenon of informal food markets in urban areas, which have been neglected in the past research. Based on an empirical study of consumer choice between informal and formal markets (markets built-up by street hawkers vs. government-planned markets), this paper provides a basis for understanding the nature of informal markets in the Vietnamese context. The results show that cheap price and convenience (proximity) are important in shaping the choice by consumers for informal markets for food, while close relationship with sellers or services provided by sellers are not. Shoppers with higher concern for freshness and safety of fresh food are more likely to shop at formal markets. Additionally, low-income shoppers are found significantly inclined toward informal markets, while higher-income shoppers tend to shop at formal markets. Therefore, these two types of market should be viewed as two marketplaces to serve two segments of consumer groups, rather than two markets competing for a share of the business.

The Economics of Branchless Banking

if you are a day laborer who is not sure what employment opportunities there may be tomorrow; if you are a street hawker making $2 a day and know you will have to come up with $20 to send your children to school in September; if you are the family’s breadwinner but have no medical insurance—can you afford not to engage in finance? Finance is essential to help people escape a hand-to-mouth existence, yet the reality today is that if you are poor or low income, your financial world is disconnected from the rest of the world. In all likelihood, you rely on informal solutions: stashing small amounts of cash in a jar; relying on friends and family members to help out with occasional loans or favors; belonging to an informal community savings group; or using the services of trusted money guards or moneylenders. Financial markets are quite simply failing to meet the needs of a vast swath of society—those who are poor, and especially the poor living in rural areas—in a way that is affordable, convenient, and safe. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is not that markets are inherently incapable of meeting this need; our current financial system simply has not organized itself to meet it. This paper offers a vision for how to construct a banking infrastructure that is (1) commercially viable, (2) safe and trusted, and (3) accessible to all. At the very least, this requires that each player in the value chain have a clear financial incentive to participate in and actively promote the service. Moreover, each transaction must be profitable on a stand-alone basis so that customer profitability can always be assumed, which makes a true mass-market approach possible, with no incentive for providers to deny service based on minimum balances or intensity of use. It is analogous to prepaid airtime for mobile operators: a card bought is profit booked, regardless of who bought the prepaid card. This suggests the central importance of keeping fixed per-customer costs extremely small and of reducing unit transaction costs, which will fully commoditize (and hence democratize) the banking product. The starting point of building this system is to take banking transactions out of bank branches and into retail stores in every neighborhood and in every village.