Mumbai: Hawker hawker everywhere, and all the stations did shrink
BMC claims it has tried every trick in the book to regulate vendors, but they just won’t budge
Despite the city administration and the courts attempting to impose some form of order on the haphazard operations of hawkers, nobody at Dadar seems to have a whiff that a policy is afoot to weed out illegal hawking.
The station, which is an intersection for central and western railway lines, gets viciously cramped during peak hours. Here, commuters vie for space with more than a thousand vendors who spread their wares on the ground.
It's a crowded nightmare, especially for passengers who wish to switch trains.
The Brihamumbai Municipal Corporation has tried an array of approaches, from a building for hawkers to anti-encroachment drives. But all in vain. Commuter Smriti Kulkarni said, "You step out of the station and you are surrounded by hawkers. There is no place to walk. Roads like the Phool Galli are so narrow you don't dare go there."
The BMC built a five-storey building for hawkers in 2001 after significant expenditure. But hawkers didn't move to the lift-less structure, citing that nobody would climb up three to four floors to buy grocery or trinkets. BMC then placed huge tree pots on the footpath, which instead of driving vendors out only narrowed the pavement further. Then ward officer Sharad Ughade, G-South ward, fenced the area under the flyover and stationed municipal and police vans to monitor hawkers for some months. This too didn't work.
Hawkers would scamper away the moment they would see civic or police officials approaching, and return just seconds later.
Even a deadly stampede at Elphinstone Road station bridge during 2017 monsoon couldn't shake their resolve of doing business as usual.
"There is a nexus between civic officers and hawkers and that's the main reason behind the chaos at Dadar station. We are ready to support hawker-free zones in every manner. But BMC officers are reluctant. We even offered to instal CCTV cameras at our expense to watch hawking activities but civic officers don't want this simple solution. They have a different agenda," said Sandip Deshpande, a spokesperson for Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.