On Street Food

Yesterday, I watched a poor man preparing his dinner. He built a small fire and stoked it using a chimta. He dug into his stock of atta and kneaded dough for his chappatis. He took some dal out from a container and put it to boil. He had some Capital: chimta, tawa, pots and pans, stirring spoons etc. It was then the thought struck: What if someone is poorer than this? What if he has no stocks of atta and dal? What if he does not have the means to build a fire? What if he has no tawa, no pots and pans?

The answer should be fairly obvious: the poorer man will have to depend on street vendors of cooked food. It therefore follows that vendors of street food are the greatest friends of the poor. Yet, they remain a persecuted lot today. If anyone puts up a roadside stall selling food, he is hounded and harassed by the authorities. His surpluses are regularly stolen. And what is worse, tax money is spent on a “food subsidy” for the poor. Like all other subsidies, these cause inflation – further hurting the poor. Another case of “false philanthropy.”

Vipin Veetil at First Principles analyses how food inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Thus, every action of our The State actually hurts the poor. The new “stimulus package” is no exception. Indeed, if nations could solve their economic problems by simply printing money, there would be no poverty anywhere. And no one would need to work either. There would be money, money and more money everywhere. Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? Watch this video of Ron Paul on the 2 trillion dollar bailout in the US, including some acidic comments on Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.

The Capitalism espoused here at Antidote is dedicated to the smallest businessman – the street hawkers and vendors in all our cities. They should be allowed to run their businesses freely. And at all times. The city never sleeps. Today, they are totally insecure. And at the mercy of predatory officials.

Note that Singapore attained independence in 1965, a year after Nehru’s death. At that time, the city-state had over 2,50,000 street vendors. The government built special markets for these hawkers in all the outlying residential areas (removing them from the central business district) – and then studied their operations and earnings. Finding that their earnings were not insubstantial, the Singapore government began taxing them. Today, all these hawkers are middle-class taxpayers.

And, what is more, these vendors of street food are a tourist attraction. Win-win all around. We must do the same in India. Actually, the first Mughal emperor, Babur, was a great fan of street food. When he conquered Delhi, Babur was aghast to find that the bazaars of his new city did not sell cooked food. It was thanks to Mughal patronage that a street food culture exploded in India. But this culture is now slowly dying. It must be revived. It is street food that feeds the really poor. Not the “ration shop.”