HC tells BMC : Issue ID Cards to Hawkers ! ( I told you so — in 2020 ! )
The Bombay High Court has now directed the Maharashtra State Government and BMC to issue ID cards to all authorised hawkers in Mumbai.
[ Read the Hindustan Times report here : HC tells State, BMC to issue ID cards to authorised hawkers ]
My reaction ?
Only 5 years late !
And I mean that quite literally.
What I had proposed — back in February 2020
On 26 February 2020 — more than five years ago — I wrote a detailed blog post titled :
>> BMC proposes : Hawkers will dispose ? [ 26 Feb 2020 ]
In that post, I had specifically proposed :
✔ Grant a hawking license to ALL 3 lakh hawkers in Mumbai
✔ BMC to issue each hawker a plastic ID card with — photo, name, gender, birth-date, address, mobile no, Aadhaar No, PAN etc.
✔ The card to be embedded with a pre-paid / rechargeable FasTag, which would automatically transfer licence fee to BMC's bank account
✔ A mobile app [ I called it HawkWalk ] on the hawker's smartphone to display his exact location 24x7 on a Central Hawking Control Room dashboard at BMC
✔ If a hawker uses BHIM for accepting payments, 5% of each sale would automatically get credited towards his monthly licence fee — thereby incentivising digital payments and organising this totally unorganised sector
✔ Integration with What3Words GIS API for precise pitch-slot identification — far simpler than BMC's proposed Latitude / Longitude approach
And the most important outcome of all :
Once every hawker becomes LICENSED, he can flash his plastic card at the police constable and say :
" I am taking your photo with HawkWalk and pressing the button : This officer wants a bribe "
End of the Hafta Raj !
( Remember : Rs 1.5 crore changes hands every SINGLE DAY in Mumbai in hafta payments to allow street hawking. Each unlicensed vendor pays an average of Rs 50 per day. That is Rs 18,250 per year — gone, forever, the moment he gets a licence card. )
Then in May 2020 — I went further
When Finance Minister Smt. Sitharaman announced the Street Vendor Loan Scheme ( Rs 10,000 working capital loans for 50 lakh vendors ), I wrote :
>> Street Vendor Loan Scheme [ 14 May 2020 ]
My argument was simple :
By repaying Rs 31 per day ( principal + interest ), a vendor avoids hafta of Rs 50 per day.
Daily net saving = Rs 19. Annual saving per vendor = Rs 7,000. Saving for 50 lakh vendors = Rs 3,500 Crore per year.
The FM did not mention this saving in her press briefing. Politically incorrect, perhaps ?
More related blogs — if you want the full picture :
>> All my blogs on : ID Cards for Street Vendors
So — what is the pattern here ?
I have been writing to Central and State Government Ministers, Chief Ministers, Secretaries and Municipal Commissioners for many years now — emailing them detailed, specific, actionable proposals on a wide range of policy matters.
The response is almost always :
✗ No acknowledgement
✗ No reply
✗ No action
And then — somewhere between 5 and 8 years later — the same idea quietly surfaces as a Government Order, a Court directive, or a new scheme.
Without, of course, any reference to whoever originally suggested it.
I have stopped being surprised. Or bitter. At 92, I have learned that ideas are like seeds — you plant them, and someone else harvests them. What matters is that the harvest happens.
The Bombay High Court has now done what BMC should have done in 2020.
Better late than never.
But imagine — just imagine — what Mumbai's streets would look like today if the system had moved in 2020, not 2025.
3 lakh hawkers, each with a digital ID. Zero hafta. Full GIS tracking. Digital payments. A clean, organised, humane informal economy.
Instead, we waited five more years for a High Court to tell the BMC what a retired 87-year-old had already told them in a blog post.
Such is life in India's governance ecosystem.
I remain — optimistic.
With regards,
Hemen Parekh
08 May 2026
hcp@RecruitGuru.com
www.hemenparekh.ai
[ PS : If you wish to chat with my Digital Avatar — even when I am no longer here physically — visit : www.hemenparekh.ai ]
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