A comprehensive 4-day national meeting was organized by National Hawker’s Federation (NHF) from 1st August – 4th August at Goa. Various NHF state leaders and representatives attended the event. Parisar conducted sessions on the first day, 1st August, 2023 on Single Use Plastic, Urban Mobility and Social Media.
Following are key insights from the meeting:
Session 1: Single Use Plastic (SUP)
The session started with information on SUP and its technical information on material, application, hazards, alternatives and information on the SUP ban in India and its impact on street vendors. It was followed by information and discussion on the politics around plastic and how the capitalist-influenced political ecosystem is deliberately allowing production of plastics including SUP used by MNCs while imposing a ban on non-branded SUP mainly used by vendors and small-scale industries. The session concluded with introduction and information on Just Transition and how it is essential to move away from a given situation like in this case, usage of single use plastic.
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Session 2: Urban Mobility
The second session focused on Urban Mobility – the concept, terminology, case studies and relevance. The team discussed about how increase in private transport is leading to lesser space on the road and public area thus leading to chaos on the road and further forcing the street vendors to vacate with the allegation of hijacking public space. The team also introduced the concept of Multi Utility Zone (MUZ) as mentioned in the Indian Road Congress (IRC) guidelines and informed the street vendors that these MUZ can be utilised as vending spaces for street vendors. The leaders and participants expressed keen interest in the topic and requested to have a more detailed information and discussion on this issue especially with the Town Vending Committee (TVC) members during future meetings of NHF.
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Session 3: Social Media
An interactive session on introduction to social media and its role in development sector was discussed. All the participants enjoyed the ice breakers and reciprocated well in the interactive session.
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