Why are street vendors allowed to sell on footpaths and roads? Aren't streets for walking and traffic?

Streets are for walking and traffic. They are also for a hundred things besides. Watch any Indian street for an hour and you will see buses halt, cyclists weave, shopkeepers unload, mechanics fix scooters, children wait for vans, processions pass, scaffolding narrow the path, and private cars park for hours on public land. The street has always been a shared space, not a corridor reserved for two uses.

Once you notice this, the question sharpens. If the street can hold a parked car, a shop’s unloading, a builder’s scaffolding, or a wedding procession, why is the vendor the one singled out as an intruder? Vending uses public space for private gain, true. But it also does something the parked car does not: it serves the passing public. A tea seller, cobbler, fruit vendor, or snack stall puts cheap goods and quick service exactly where people already are.

The parked car makes the comparison plain. It occupies scarce public space for one owner and may sit idle for hours, serving no one. A vendor takes less room and serves hundreds in a day. Yet cities normalise the parking and treat the vending as disorder. That is not a neutral planning judgment. It is a judgment about whose use of the street looks respectable and whose looks inconvenient.

Vendors also make streets safer. A street with people on it all day has eyes on it all day. The tea seller knows the regular office crowd. The fruit seller notices the lost child. The newspaper vendor knows the rhythm of the lane. Their presence makes the street more legible and more secure than any cleared pavement.

None of this means a vendor may block a road or swallow a footpath. Pedestrians need safe passage. Ambulances must get through. Noise, waste, and congestion need managing. The point is only this: vending is a legitimate use of the street, to be regulated as one, not an illegal intrusion to be cleared on sight.