Hawkers in Kolkata

[1] In Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal, almost 80 per cent of the pavements are encroached by hawkers and illegal settlers.

[2] In many countries, hawkers use pavements or other public places to retail their goods or services but in Kolkata the magnitude has drawn special attention of administrators and law courts.

As in any other Indian city, the immigrants found poverty in Kolkata as severe and dehumanising as in the villages, but was offered a relatively quick opportunity of new income through placement in the urban economy.

With the partition of India in 1947, the metropolitan cities of Kolkata and Delhi were flooded by displaced persons or refugees from Pakistan.

[6] While the economy of Kolkata has been sliding backwards in many respects, there has been remarkable expansion in certain areas – real estate, information technology and retail trade.

Later, when the CPI(M) was firmly in saddle as leader of the Left Front for around two decades, it launched Operation Sunshine in 1996.

[8] Officers of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, cadres of the CPI(M) along with police battalions demolished the side walk stalls of thousands of hawkers.

[9] However, in the face of protests, the municipal administration and the police allowed the hawkers to reoccupy gradually the pavements of streets from which they had been cleared.

In 1996, Kolkata High Court asked the state government to submit a detailed report on pavement encroachment.

[11] Commenting on a petition filed by environmentalist Subhas Dutta in 2004, the division bench of Chief Justice V.S.