As dawn breaks over Kolkata, the city slowly stretches awake. Buses begin their morning routes, office workers hurry toward railway stations, and schools prepare to welcome students. Long before this familiar rhythm begins, however, another workforce has already completed half a day's labour. A vegetable seller carefully arranges fresh tomatoes and green vegetables on a bamboo stall while an elderly fruit vendor wipes rainwater from bananas gathered before sunrise. Every basket they display carries more than produce,it carries hope. Earnings of a single day determine whether school fees are paid, medicines are purchased or dinner reaches the family table. Yet for thousands of street hawkers across India, every morning begins with another uncertainty: will today end in business as usual, or in another eviction drive? Although cities undeniably require organised roads, safe pavements and efficient traffic management, development should not come at the cost of dignity. Street vendors are not merely occupants of public space; they are entrepreneurs who sustain neighbourhood economies, provide affordable essentials within walking distance and support complex supply chains connecting farmers, wholesalers and consumers. Losing a vending space means losing far more than a physical location,it often means losing years of customer trust, daily income and the fragile financial stability upon which entire families depend.
“It is the stationary magagine stall from 1968 .” Mantu Ghosh stated.. “ Then price of newspaper was only 12 paise . My grandfather opened this stall on the station. Now , we received the eviction notice. We don’t know how we will arrange livelihood. My son and daughter have not got a job till now. We can’t afford a place to be hired because of high rent in this area. “
The fruit vendor Santanu burst into tears and said “ I regret everything but don’t know where to go”
[ Names are altered because of obvious reasons]
The challenge facing modern cities is therefore not whether street vending should exist, but how it can coexist with organised urban development. Recognising this balance, the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 sought to protect vendors from arbitrary eviction while encouraging regulated vending through surveys, Town Vending Committees and designated vending zones. Nevertheless, implementation continues to vary across cities, leaving many vendors uncertain about their future. Rather than viewing hawkers as obstacles to development, governments can increasingly employ evidence-based urban planning through Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial mapping and participatory governance to identify suitable vending locations that preserve pedestrian movement without eliminating livelihoods. Around the world, cities have demonstrated that thoughtful regulation can successfully integrate informal commerce into urban planning instead of removing it altogether. The question is no longer whether cities should modernise, but whether they can modernise without forgetting the people who have quietly kept them alive for generations.
Ironically, the technologies transforming global delivery platforms may also offer hope to neighbourhood hawkers. While developing a local route recommendation engine using Python, SQL, OpenStreetMap, the Haversine Formula, Dijkstra's Algorithm and A* Search,[visit_the_link], I realised that these mathematical principles are not exclusive to multinational corporations. The same algorithms that optimise deliveries for large logistics companies can enable small vendors to identify nearby customers, recommend efficient delivery routes, reduce travel costs and analyse neighbourhood demand using affordable open-source technologies. My routing system demonstrates how geospatial computing can be adapted into practical business intelligence for local commerce, allowing even a single vegetable seller to benefit from digital innovation. Rather than replacing informal businesses, artificial intelligence can strengthen them through multilingual ordering systems, digital payments, route optimisation and community-based delivery networks. A truly smart city is therefore not measured solely by intelligent infrastructure or faster algorithms. It is measured by whether innovation expands opportunity for those who need it most. When we look at a roadside stall, we should see more than a temporary structure on a pavement,we should see resilience, entrepreneurship and the determination to earn an honest living. The future of urban development should not force cities to choose between progress and people. With thoughtful policy and inclusive technology, both can grow together.
References
Dijkstra, E. W. (1959). A note on two problems in connexion with graphs. Numerische Mathematik, 1(1), 269–271.
Government of India. (2014). The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.
Hart, P. E., Nilsson, N. J., & Raphael, B. (1968). A formal basis for the heuristic determination of minimum cost paths. IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics, 4(2), 100–107.
International Labour Organization. (2018). Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture (3rd ed.).
OpenStreetMap contributors. (n.d.). OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org