A word with Mr. Pratap Sahoo

It was a regular day of august and we were in our FRA class.In the end Dr. Ramana Sir told us that Mr. Pratap Sahoo is going to meet us right now, the leader of the union of the Vending zones. He is  a vending zone activist.

Mr. Sahoo was very humble to us while talking and said its difficult for him to summarize his 15 year experience in 15 minutes due to time constraints.

He said that the 3 basic demands put forth were Identity card for the vendors,Rehabilitation ,To start any business with the provision of Article19(1)(g). he informed us more about their uphill battle fought to convert vendor’s bill into an act in 2004.Also this national policy was later amended in light of the Swadan Singh casein Delhi High Court. After this the issue of eviction was taken care of and use of 19(1)(g) was implied. He also told us that there were 60 vending zones in Bhubaneshwar & the police commissioner declare that vending zones of Bhubaneshawar could be the ideal model for  future vending zones to come. He went to mention that Ranchi has the best model but was more & less inspired by Bhubaneshwar only.

Some of the benefits of VZ for hawkers are:

• Fear of eviction gone and they are assured of rehabilitation
• can afford education of their children through loans taken by showing shops as their assets.
• Increase in regular source of income.
  

Some of the advantages for muncipalities are:

• lakhs saved due to removal of eviction drives.
• taxes from hawkers
• model for entire India to emulate

I was astonished to know when he told that people from countries like America, China, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand etc. have also visited to study the unique model of Bhubhaneshwar VZ.He also touched upon the issue of Public Private Partneship model to be taken in case of VZ.

As I mentioned in the start , he was more than happy to answer all our questions. Finally the class representative gave a 'Thank you' speech. The interaction helped us a lot to gain insights about this serious issue.