The Street Vendors Act and the right to public space in Mumbai

Since the reforms of the 1990s, informal street trading has played an ever-growing role in India’s urban economies. In March 2014, a new federal law protecting the rights of street traders (Street Vendors Act) was adopted, which recognised the legitimacy and legality of their activities through a process of regularisation. This legal arrangement was intended to introduce new modes of governance applicable to public space, which would include street vendors, a marginal population that would now enjoy new opportunities of contributing to the urban future. Nevertheless, hawking is an activity still criminalised by the authorities in Mumbai. It is against the background of widespread competition for urban space and resources that we will analyse the social, political and spatial organisation of street trading and its development, together with the conflicts that arise from it. This article explores the ordinary practices, the social, political and spatial “tactics” and “strategies” employed by street vendors to access and capture public space, at the time of the introduction of the Street Vendors Act. It will examine the different forms of law in practice in the streets of Mumbai, i.e. the transgressions, the fixes and the negotiations, but also the new applications of legal tools in these conflicts. Through these questions, we will consider the new forms of exclusion, focusing on the role of the spatial dimension in these processes.