Monday, November 14, 2011

Indian ingenuity

If the Times of India is to be believed, India is about to do something excellent and revolutionary: protect the livelihood and security of the nation's 10 million street vendors.

Housing and urban poverty alleviation minister Kumari Selja told the paper that the government "is working on an effective and practical central legislation to protect livelihood and social security of legitimate street vendors,"  The proposal is aimed at enabling vendors and hawkers an honest living and intends to prevent harassment of street vendors by police and civic authorities. 

The law would be administered locally by committees made up of vendors, government employees, traffic police, land-owning agencies and officials from local banks.

The devil, of course, will be in the fine-print and implementation. So I hope that any Indian readers of this blog, or others who follow these kinds of proposals closely, will keep us posted as the proposal moves forward.

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