Editor’s Note: The authors published a much more extensive report on the Street Vendors Act of 2014 titled “Progress Report: Implementing the Street Vendors Act 2014” available on Centre for Civil Society’s website at https://tinyurl.com/y4bywn6o. For more information about Centre for Civil Society, please visit their main website at https://www.ccs.in/.

An estimated one crore people in India rely on street vending for their livelihoods, supplying affordable and essential goods to the public and contributing directly to economic growth. However, they operate in public spaces over which different stakeholders claim contrasting and competing interests. In addition, a lack of clarity on their rights encourages informal governance and allows local authorities to benefit from flourishing channels of rent-seeking.

In 2014, the Government of India (GoI) made it a policy priority to improve the business environment in the country. This prioritisation derived from India's lacklustre performance on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index which ranks 190 countries on their business regulatory environment. Since 2003, the World Bank has measured the time, cost and regulation of entry, operation and exit for firms, and ranked countries based on these measurements and government reporting.

"Due to a lack of clarity in the judicial decisions, in 2009, the Street Vendors Policy 2004 was revised as the ‘National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009’. The revised policy was not legally binding and made little progress on the matter of street vendors. In 2010, the Supreme Court directed the government to enact a law regulating street vending and thus, the Street Vendors Bill 2012 was drafted. The Bill was passed in both houses by February 2014 and became the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.

Against the post-New Industrial Policy (1991) growth witnessed in large-scale industries, a corresponding boom in the small and mid-sized domestic industry has been conspicuously absent. The paper seeks to document the causes for the same. Further, a comparative evaluation of Indian MSMEs with those operating in other BRICS nations will be conducted, in an attempt to understand the overall effect of the business, policy and legal/regulatory environment on the growth of MSMEs.

This paper presents case studies of two tribal villages - Mendha Lekha and Jamguda - successfully running forest-based bamboo businesses under the community forest rights provisions of Forest Rights Act (2006). We have documented the issues faced by the villagers in claiming community forest rights, issues faced in harvesting and sale of bamboo, and business practices adopted by both the villages.

Street vendors’ rights to carry on their trade in public spaces have been the subject matter of debate and discussion in India for a very long time. In fact, it has taken numerous judgments of the Supreme Court and High Court to recognize their rights and shape up a statutory regime. This scenario raises an important question, as to what is the kind of property rights enjoyed by these street vendors. A study was undertaken to analyse this aspect and answer some key questions pertaining to the gradual changes that occurred in the overall concept of property rights in India.