Hawkers’ display counters: Bikes, car bonnets, lamp posts, cables, railings

Kolkata: With pavements and parts of carriageways already encroached upon, hawkers in the city have come up with innovative yet disruptive ways to take over space for their business. Bonnets of parked vehicles, seats of stationary bikes, lamp posts, wires, garden railings—nothing seems to be off-limits as hawkers scout for new space to display and store their wares.
Motorists trying to restart their vehicles have to wait for eternity for hawkers to remove their fares from the bonnets, pedestrians hardly ever get the chance to walk on pavements and even traders have to struggle to enter their own shops but no amount of crackdown on unauthorised vendors seems to work. Last year, the civic body drew yellow lines on several pavements in the New Market area to restrict hawkers. They did follow the line for a couple of days before overstepping the limits, again. "Just when we thought there was hardly any scope left for illegal encroachment since pavements and parts of carriageways were already usurped, hawkers came up with innovative ways. Now, even parked vehicles and street furniture are not out of bounds for them," said the secretary of a market committee in central Kolkata.
In June last year, the authorities cracked down on hawkers after a nudge from chief minister Mamata Banerjee but hawkers not only returned after a few weeks, several new encroachers joined them.
On Brabourne Road, hawkers lay out their wares on the bonnets of every parked vehicle in the area, putting up clothes, umbrellas, bags and utensils. "We started business during Durga Puja last year. Since there was hardly any space left on pavements, the union told us to carry out the business from the road temporarily till new space opened up. We were told to display goods on parked vehicles," said Amit Shaw, a hawker on Brabourne Road. Some hang their wares on cables and some string them up on lamp posts. On Bertram Street, Lindsay Street and Humayun Place, too, hawkers use parked bikes as makeshift stalls, sitting atop vehicles to conduct business. Even the civic gardens on roads have been usurped with some vendors stacking their goods on the railings.
A growing number of vendors have started placing their goods on van rickshaws, parking them on main roads in areas, such as New CIT Road, Ganesh Chandra Avenue, Bentinck Street and Canning Street.
Repeated crackdowns don't seem to yield results as illegal vendors keep returning to the spots. "It gets harder to walk or drive in these areas with every passing day," said Amit Khemka, a resident of MG Road. "We follow all rules and pay taxes, but these hawkers block the way and take away our customers," said Naseem Alam, a shop owner on Canning Street.