On Street Commerce

The photograph accompanying this post was taken in Accra, Ghana, by my young libertarian-activist friend, Africanus Kofi Akosah. It came to me today on Facebook - and it struck a chord, for I am in deep sympathy with the street hawkers of the Third World, the "informal economy" that Peter Bauer was the first to study. In India, these brave entrepreneurs are a hounded, harrassed lot. You see it almost every day on the streets of Nude Elly - when the shout goes around, "Commitee aa gayi," and they pick up their stuff and flee, before the predatory personnel of the New Delhi Municipal Committee catch them and confiscate their wares, their precious Capital.

Our cops are no better - and the entire country knows that. I remember attending a meeting called by Madhu Kishwar and Renana Jhabwala of SEWA in which the issue of police predation on street-hawkers was discussed with the "super cop" KPS Gill, and Gill proudly declared, "You cannot stop it." SEWA is the Self-Employed Women's Association, and many of their members are street hawkers. I was much inspired when Renana, a tiny woman, snapped back, instantly, at this gigantic cop, "In my lifetime we will stop it."

Kishwar and Jhabwala raised such a stink on this gross corruption that the then prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, issued a letter to the Delhi Administration calling for a "national policy on street hawkers." But the bureaucRATS buried the idea. The press moved on to other issues. And the people forgot. Once in a while, they are reminded of it, as when all the hawkers in Nude Elly are evicted to make way for the CONgresswealth Games. But then, as usual, all is forgotten, and The System continues with its predatory ways.

I recall the time when the Communists running Calcutta evicted all the hawkers - and called it "Operation Sunshine"!

It was in Amsterdam that I first noticed how big an industry street hawking could be. This great city has miles and miles of informal street markets, in which all kinds of things are sold from makeshift stalls. Tourists love the atmosphere. Yet, even here, as my inquiries revealed, there are problems of licenses - which are difficult to get, with very long waiting periods, and which are neither transferable nor inheritable. I struggled to find a solution applicable to my country - and finally found it in Cologne, Germany.

Cologne is an ancient city, once conquered by the Romans, and it is noteworthy that some of the streets around the great cathedral there are paved with the original Roman stones, which the city has preserved. At least the Romans built roads!

A local journalist had invited me for a walkabout and, as we walked along the streets, all lined with shops, he revealed to me a little nugget of Cologne's history. He said:

In the old days, poor people used to come here from far and wide to sell their wares in our markets, and it was the duty of our Buergermeister (mayor) to ensure that the street markets were open to them. But now, the people are wealthy, they all own shops, and we have just recently deleted this duty from our local laws.

Of course, there is no "vicious circle of poverty" - the evil and nonsensical theory taught to me on my first day of college in Delhi University. All countries and peoples started off poor. As Peter Bauer mockingly wrote of this theory, "If the proposition were true, the entire world would still be in the Old Stone Age." I know of a shop in a swank Nude Elly market that sells namkeen - the owner of that shop started off twenty years ago selling roasted salt peanuts off a cart in the very same market.

Economic progress - moving up the ladder from a pushcart to a shop - requires only one thing: the Accumulation of Capital. If we can stop State Predation on street hawkers, this process of economic progress will automatically transpire.

It is Cologne that really provides us with the key: It must be the constitutional duty of every city and town mayor to see to the smooth conduct of all business within his jurisdiction, including street commerce that is conducted informally.

Cologne provides yet another key - for the mayor's constitutional duty must also be to build good roads and footpaths, like the Romans did. Then, there will be more space, including commercial space, and shops will become more and more affordable. In our cities and towns, especially Nude Elly, the very opposite is happening, because commercial space is shrinking.