ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on streets as contested spaces where different classes meet and clash, and social inclusion and exclusion take place. Streets in India are multi-functional spaces where the public and the private, the sacred and the profane, work and leisure all mix. Street vending offers unskilled labourers immediate means of making money and consumers daily commodities for inexpensive prices. Yet streets are now becoming 'public space' in urban planning from which street vendors tend to be excluded. The chapter focuses on the present circumstance of street vendors in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and shows how two major actors, the Ahmedabad Municipality Corporation (AMC)/the state and the NGO such as the SEWA try to include street vendors in contested space called streets. It seeks the possibility of streets becoming spaces for inclusion of people from different social strata. In 2004, the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation promulgated the National Policy on Street Vendors.
