Voices from the street: people, policy and pandemic

About the project

The Government of India responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with a series of measures including a national lockdown and increased testing capacity. Citizens were supported through various initiatives including an economic package of INR 21 trillion in May 2020, cash transfers for women and elderly, food distribution for the poor, free travel schemes, and interest-free loans for state governments.

Only vendors selling essential goods were permitted to operate during the lockdown and most other vendors were unable to work. As a result, women vendors, who account for approximately 30% of vendors in India have had to bear additional financial, childcare, housework pressures and harassment.

This project will analyse government responses to the pandemic, document the challenges that vendors are facing and enable policy reform.

It will do this by:

• interviewing 40 women street vendors in Rajasthan and Delhi to understand theimpact of pandemic-related executive orders on their vending businesses
• reviewing all executive orders passed across the country since March 2020 relevant to street vending
• developing an assessment tool which can be used to examine the quality of national laws such as the Disaster Management Act 2005 and the Epidemic Disease Act of 1897 (under which governments across the country have passed a series of orders during lockdown). This tool will help ascertain whether laws incorporate administrative safeguards
• facilitating multi-stakeholder engagements with policymakers, academicians and policy experts through two online events to share key findings and discuss proposed policy reforms
• holding multi-stakeholder discussions with government agencies, civil society organisations and state-level associations
• publishing two videos, five blogs, and two op-eds in national and regional media highlighting the challenges faced by street vendors, particularly women, during the pandemic