Ethnographic Approach in Understanding Street Vendors in Modern India: A Plea for Research and Documentation

Abstract

The increasing presence of street vendors in growing cities of modern India is a challenging phenomenon for development economist, urban planners and city authorities, but they provide excellent opportunity to the cultural anthropologist to understand human ingenuity and designs of culture. Whatever be the attitude, the street vendors cannot be wished away. Spatially mobile people, of which the street vendors are a part, have been an integral part of the traditional India’s social structure. Though the spatially mobile people have been pervasive and persistent throughout the history, they remain stranger to the sedentary population—customary strangers. But the social fabric under which the customary strangers operated has significantly changed. In modern India, distinct and more visibility of the street vendors have emerged. But the authorities, in general, continue to live in perpetual denial of their existence. The street vendors truly epitomise Swaraj; fiercely independent, self-reliant and dignified. The street vendors employ a variety of strategies to provide goods and services to their clients to remain in ‘business’, in the process add a variety, colour and identity to city life. The article tries to draw the attention of the authorities to recognise their existence and provide cultural and physical space to them.