Crushed

Crushed.

That's what they ordered. The carts are to be crushed and left there.

Last night men from the Thane Municipal Corporation came and did just that to the hand-carts of the hawkers who line the street outside our housing complex.

Some of these men have been hawking vegetables and fruit for years at these locations. Rain and shine. They are there with their wares.

Not today.

"Someone in one of the housing societies said that they should not just take the carts away, but destroy them and leave them there" said the hawkers "in the past we would get our carts back after they were confiscated. Now this."

That someone must be pretty powerful to have the TMC staff do what they say.

The poor live in a web of legal illegality.

I asked one of the vendours about the 'daily tax' that the TMC collects.

"They take Rs. 15 from us every day" he said, showing me the stub of the receipt for the payment he made yesterday.

And yet the same municipal government which collects taxes from the vendours also authorises the destruction of their carts.

Ditto houses in the slum pockets.

Ditto small businesses.

Its a cruel world.

The irony is that India's big retail bubble is just about to burst.

The massive fraud at Satyam computer services - where a company kept sending its stock higher every year by posting fictitious profit figures (more than 10 times their actual profits) - and thus 'creating value' that never was - shows the absolute corruption of our system.

The trickle down will be felt later this week when a big retail super-market - which opened to much fanfare 2 years ago - will be shutting down.


The writing has been on the wall for our neighbourhood "Foodland" store for some months now. Each time we go in, there is less inventory, and less people. The contrast with their local competitor "D-mart" is stark. Foodland has become a gleaming and largely empty shell - while its competitor seems bursting at the seem with robust buyers waving their debit cards.

The irony is this - Foodland had enough clout and savvy to work through the various regulations governing its running. They didn't have the TMC come and destroy their operations. Their demise has to do strictly with the cold issue of cash - not enough coming in to justify them running the join.

The street vendours will be back. But in what form? And what does this do to the inner person? To the child of God who is sitting, staring numbly at the pile of twisted metal and splintered wood that was his hand-cart, his livelihood?

Crushed.