Sir,
This has reference to your issue of September 1998 wherein you have suggested that the hawker problem in our area can be solved by developing the large patch of land at Kondivita where the weekly Saturday market is located.
I would like to suggest another solution to the hawker problem and I am quite sure most of the housewives in the area will readily agree with my suggestion.
For any housewife in Mumbai, buying vegetables and fruits is a very time- and energy-consuming task. But because it is a daily necessity no one can escape a visit to the marketplace. Nor is it by any means a pleasant experience, what with having to balance oneself carrying vegetable bags, walking on dug-up roads only shoddily patched by the muncipal corporation and with traffic speeding past you. If you have a kid in tow, heaven help you!
For all such housewives, if the vegetables and fruits were to be delivered at their doorstep, it would be a blessing and a great convenience. As it is, our other daily necessities like paper, bread, milk, etc and even groceries are delivered at our homes, so why not vegetables and fruits?
I would like to suggest that vegetable vendors get together, hire a tempo, load their wares in this tempo and visit various housing societies twice a week or thrice a week at fixed times, say for half an hour in each society. I am sure that any housewife who knows that the vegetable vendor will be at her society on, say, Tuesdays and Fridays at 6.00 pm to 6.30 p.m. will not want to visit the market again. Fruit vendors may also peddle their goods in a similar fashion.
As far as the vendors are concered, they would have a brisk and assured business. They would not have to put up stalls and wait all morning/evening for customers, in all sorts of weather. The large market area at Kondivita could be utilised by the wholesalers from whom the above tempo vendors can buy and set out for different areas like Marol, Vijay Nagar, Kondivita, J.B. Nagar, etc.
And imagine what the roads would be like -- without innumerable vendors blocking them at each step.