Street life

One week. One week is all it took for Ranchi to see a huge change on M.G.Road, one of its busiest streets. The efforts of the Ranchi Municipal Corporation(RMC), the Ranchi Traffic Police(RTP), and ITDP India Programme brought about an incredible transformation almost overnight by a quick tactical urbanism intervention. Using simple temporary measures like paint and traffic barricades, the street space was redesigned to create colourful, dedicated walking paths for pedestrians. This simple first step has created a cascade of promising changes – a first in the state of Jharkhand.

M.G.Road, leading to the Albert Ekka Chowk is one of the busiest streets of Ranchi. Imagine a street filled with cars and two wheelers. Parked two wheelers lining both sides. E-rickshaws stopping throughout the stretch to pick up and drop off people. The shopfronts overflowing onto what’s left of the street. Somewhere in the middle of all this, despite little to no footpaths, every hour more than four thousand pedestrians try to navigate through this chaos safely. This was M.G.Road until very recently. So, what changed ?

In early August, Manoj Kumar, the Ranchi Municipal Commissioner and Sanjeev Vijaywargiya, the Deputy Mayor came together with the ITDP India Programme to identify solutions to tackle traffic congestion and lack of pedestrian space on M.G.Road. They showed great enthusiasm for a tactical urbanism intervention – a low cost, temporary change with barricades and paints to improve walking conditions on M.G.Road. The transformation aimed at creating wide dedicated walking paths on the street, clearly demarcated and painted with colourful patterns with the participation of pedestrians, in order to create a sense of public ownership of the streets. The result of this intervention would help raise awareness and a public demand for a permanent intervention. This would be the first trial of its kind for Ranchi and the entire state.

Once approved, the project moved forward rapidly with the support of the RMC and the RTP. At astonishing speed, within the next two days, all stakeholders were brought on board, a detailed study was conducted, and the designs were created. On the stretch between Sarjana Chowk and Albert Ekka Chowk, a 6 metre wide walking space was demarcated on both sides. The RMC and the RTP worked together to clear the area of all parked vehicles and mark the designated areas with barricades for a two day trial run before the final tactical urbanism intervention.

From black and white to a dash of paint

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The night before the inauguration, the street saw a lot of activity. Members from the RMC, RTP, and the ITDP India Programme worked with a team of painters to transform the demarcated walking area into a colourful and vibrant space. Slowly, images of white paint started to take shape on the black footpath. Outlines of children playing, a child flying a kite, and imprints of bare feet started to add life to the space. Meandering paths of paint led the way through a field of shapes of varying sizes, of bubbles and butterflies, stars and sunflowers. Hopscotch tiles for children to play, and circles to jump around. Next came the splashes of bright pink, yellow, green and blue to fill in these shapes.

Despite some rain during the painting, the teams worked on tirelessly through the night, just stopping once in a while for a cup of hot chai to warm themselves. Even late into the night, journalists and other passers-by stopped alongside the chowk, their curiosity piqued by the hustle and bustle, to find out what was happening. As a result, the project received widespread media attention, bringing many people to the chowk the next day to see the results of the nightlong efforts.

Within a few hours of hard work, the space was transformed completely. Visitors to the street in the morning were pleasantly surprised to see the results. The Deputy Mayor, the Municipal Commissioner joined a team of volunteers from the Rotaract Club of Ranchi and other institutions along with passers-by to finish painting the walking path.

The trial was a big success with the pedestrians and cyclists on the street who responded to feedback surveys with great eagerness, expressing that they felt safer and more comfortable with the new space and expressed their support for the project asking for it to be made permanent throughout M G Road.

Looking Ahead

Ranchi has already started moving in the right direction with several positive changes as a result of this intervention. The intervention has convinced the officials to replicate this approach in other parts of the city as well. The RMC has started planning a complete redesign of M.G.Road with permanent footpaths as a pilot project for the entire city. In preparation, RMC has already issued a call for bids to repair all the drainage systems along M.G.Road.

The RTP has also decided to take progressive steps to implement smart parking management on M.G.Road. Another major development is the decision of the RMC to start running city buses on the main road from early September. The department will begin working on a detailed bus operations plan for this stretch along with new infrastructure for buses.

The quick tactical urbanism intervention that happened over one week has acted as a catalyst for all these changes. These quick, low-cost and scalable initiatives can lead to a process of creating wide reaching changes across the city. This can create a city wide network of streets that enable safe walking and better transit for all.

Ranchi is already on its way!

Written by Keshav Suryanarayanan

Edited by Kashmira Dubash

Be it Chandni Chowk in Delhi or Pondy Bazaar in Chennai, our busiest streets are lined with rows of vibrant street shops selling everything under the sun from flowers, fruits, and vegetables to shoes, clothes, and gadgets. Street vendors are a constant presence in our cities, but are often seen as a nuisance, encroachers on public space. They suffer harassment at the hands of authorities, paying bribes under the constant threat of being evicted from their spots. We need to look at their role in our cities and find efficient and humane systems to include and integrate them rather than removing them unceremoniously from our streets.

***A busy Indian Bazaar (Credit: LIFE Archive)***

Historically, bazaars and street shops have defined commerce and shopping in India with their colourful displays, variety of goods and their bustling crowds. Even today, we all remember walking and stopping by stalls and tarpaulin sheets filled with a variety of wares catching our eye. We enjoy the feeling of satisfaction when we spot bargains and end up buying three pairs of things we didn’t even know we needed at a price we didn’t think possible. Street vendors bring life to our streets, giving us a chance to stop in the middle of our busy lives and look around. They also ensure that there are “eyes on the street”, their presence making people feel safer and more comfortable being on the streets.

Street vendors form a crucial link in the informal economies that run our cities. On the buyer’s side, they provide essential goods to people at affordable prices and convenient places. On the other side, they ensure the livelihoods of a large number of workers, who work in local small-scale industries that manufacture these goods.

Despite their historical significance and economic contributions, street vending remained illegal in independent India for almost sixty years until 2014, when it was legalised by the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act. Many people still regard vendors as a public nuisance and as encroachers causing traffic problems. Authorities see them as illegal groups, and often harass them to pay bribes for their spots with the constant threat of eviction. Resident associations see them as eyesores in an otherwise “modern” city. As a result, vendors face a great difficulty with obtaining licenses, unstable earnings, and a constant fear of harassment.

When street vending spontaneously starts in areas, it is not without its issues that need to be addressed. In places which are hubs of street vending activity, there is a lack of safe and sufficient pedestrian space, forcing people to walk in traffic. We need to prevent overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in public spaces. The response from city authorities have been to conduct eviction and demolition drives to erase even traces of their presence from cities. But should the solution be to completely ban a vital activity and displace people without viable alternatives?

In 2004, the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors stated a need to recognise the role of street vendors in the economy and protect them from harassment, calling for a move from prohibition to regulation. The Act of 2014 specifies that Town Vending Committees (TVCs) must be established to carry out surveys of vendors, ensure that all existing vendors are accommodated in vending zones, and issue certificates of vending.

City civic bodies are required to design a Vending Management Plan informed by periodic surveys, certification of vendors, and designation of special vending and no-vending zones in the city. This framework can be implemented to effectively plan areas where vending can happen and reduce the issues that result from unregulated vending. The sad reality is that while extensive city-wide plans are required in all our cities, very few cities have started designing and implementing any such plan.

While the overall result is a city-wide plan, it has to be created as a series of local area plans. This is primarily because vendors already exist and cannot be displaced too far off from their current locations, and different streets in a region will have different capacities for vending zones. This can be assessed only at the neighbourhood level.

Bhubaneshwar was one of the first cities in India to come up with a plan working with stakeholders, vendors and the authorities. Between 2007 and 2011, the plan created 54 vending zones with 2600 permanent kiosks through a public, private and community partnership model. In February this year, Agra implemented a vending zone plan with 46 spots in the city. According to the plan, the zones will have drinking water facilities, street lights, pavements, parking space, dustbins and seating for visitors.

However, there is a long way to go. Bhubaneshwar, for example, needed a total of 180 vending zones to accomodate all 22000 vendors in the city. Most other cities have not even started the process of engaging with street vendors.

***A street food vendor’s mobile stall***

We can learn from these cities and design inclusive and integrated cities. Imagine our cities with streets filled with people, walking along a variety of shops, and safe and vibrant communities in every public space. Implemented well, the policies we already have in place can ensure that street vendors find their place in our cities, making better cities for them and for all of us.

Written by Keshav Suryanarayanan

Edited by Kashmira Dubash

Ranchi Walks Ahead: The Overnight Transformation of M.G.Road

Street Vending: Need or Nuisance?