The Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis had designed Islamabad to “make it as safe, traditional and free of friction as possible.” The reality is that the developmental model of this city serves the elite, while a quiet class war wages against the working poor.

Over the past several months, large-scale anti-encroachment drives have taken place in the city. The heavy axe of these operations by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has fallen on street vendors, due to their informal status, political weakness and their exclusion from elite-driven imaginaries of the city.

The distribution of a few dozen politically branded vendor carts is merely an eyewash in what is really a daily struggle for survival, as street vendors remain perpetually on edge fearing the sudden appearance of municipal authorities, armed with trucks and bulldozers.

This onslaught is particularly egregious considering the cost-of-living crisis over the past few years, as a result of which — according to a recent World Bank report — 45 percent of the country’s population is living below the poverty line.

As in most Pakistani cities, street vendors are critical to Islamabad — a part of the economy and a lifeline to the urban poor. But without legal recognition, they battle eviction, extortion and a system designed to keep them invisible…

A KEY COG IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

Street vendors provide a significant contribution to the urban economy. They cluster near transport hubs and markets, offering affordable goods that sustain the urban poor. More importantly, they provide vital income generation opportunities to thousands of people, while the formal sector struggles to provide decent, well-paying jobs.

However, their informal status makes them vulnerable to ‘anti-encroachment’ operations. They try to cope in various ways, including retreating from major markets to smaller streets or carrying less merchandise, which allows them to be more mobile as well as potentially risk a smaller loss in case of seizure.

A cobbler, who can now only carry out minor repairs as he has locked away his supplies, tells Eos, “What can or will I do if the CDA people seize my tools [and supplies], which are worth 20,000 rupees, asks an elderly cobbler, who can now only carry out minor repairs, as he prefers not to bring along his tools. An elderly vendor huddles at a nearby staircase, her wares reduced to what she can hold in her arms.

Despite the ingenuity of these tactics, these are temporary coping mechanisms. If these operations persist, most street vendors will not be able to sustain themselves.

SYSTEMIC ISSUES

Due to their informal status, street vendors are extremely vulnerable to these operations. As renowned urban planner Ananya Roy argues, informality should not be understood as a failure to plan, but “as a planning regime.”

In the absence of formal legal recognition, the city bureaucracy can showcase its ‘efficiency’ by carrying out operations against street vendors. When the impetus for these operations falls off, it resorts to everyday extortion. It also allows formal shopkeepers to extract rents from street vendors.

There was a time when a licence, called a ‘pass’, used to be issued, but that practice was terminated many years ago. A limited number of seasonal passes continued to be issued till a few months ago.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government had started the Ehsaas Rehribaan initiative in 2021. This initiative allowed street vendors to temporarily operate without fear of eviction and everyday extortion, in return for a nominal fee. In 2023, Senator Sania Nishtar introduced the Rehribaan (street vendors) Livelihood Protection Bill, which would have offered a degree of protection to street vendors, but there was no progress on this legislation.

With the change in government, even the licences which had been issued as part of this pilot project were cancelled, with officials citing vague reasons of corruption, misuse of photocopies and encroachment beyond the permitted areas. These street vendors were not just betrayed but were, once again, subject to extortion, some had their carts destroyed, while others faced threats of seizure and eviction.

After failing to get relief from any government department, the Anjuman-i-Rehribaan Islamabad — the street vendors union — eventually filed a writ petition in the Islamabad High Court. Over the past year, there have been over a dozen hearings on this case.

The unrepresentative and unelected city bureaucracy — the CDA as well as the District Municipal Administration — has engaged in all manner of delaying tactics while continuing to target these vendors in a clear contempt of the ongoing court proceedings. Outside of the courtroom, it has deployed the usual underhand attempts to cower the leadership of the union into silence.

All of this seems aimed at making sure that the status of street vendors remains informal. This informality and the accompanying precarity allows the higher bureaucracy to periodically showcase its efficiency, while also sustaining an exclusionary, elite-centric vision for the development of the city.

A CITY FOR THE MANY…

Without legal recognition, the bureaucracy avoids setting precedents for future vendors. For the lower bureaucracy, the informality allows for largely unhindered everyday extortion — a juice here, a shawarma there, a little bit of cash everywhere.

All of these aspects make this case extremely significant not just for the street vendors, but for anyone who cares about the right to the city and, most importantly, the right to stay. Moreover, the implications of this case extend well beyond just these street vendors, to hundreds of thousands all over the country, who have been silently struggling against an exclusionary government machinery, whose developmental vision has no space for them.

There is an alternative to this. First, this requires legal recognition by passing the relevant legislation and updating by-laws. Second, street vendors need to be meaningfully included in policy formulation, which is currently complicated by their general lack of unionisation.

The Anjuman-i-Rehribaan is an exception to this, but even that has been excluded from formal consultations. The process of issuing licences and permits should be made clear and transparent, based upon the input of relevant stakeholders, especially street vendors. The allocation of designated vending spaces needs to be close to existing operations, not distant and peripheral zones.

Finally, there is the question of the planning paradigm, which currently views street vendors as, at best, nuisances responsible for congestion and, at worst, outsiders who illegally encroach upon valuable land. In either case, these visions are far too enamoured by the cosmetically enforced order and the distilled lifelessness of a gated suburbia. Islamabad needs to be imagined better — a city that works for the many, not just a few.

The writer is Teaching Fellow at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in LUMS, Lahore. He can be contacted at muhammad.saleemi@lums.edu.pk

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 27th, 2025