The Unplanned City: How Marginalised Voices Are Silenced in Name of Urban Development

This article is part of a series studying the effects of urbanisation, climate change induced risks and rising informality on India’s vulnerable and marginalised communities. Read Part I here and Part II here.

Last month, Visakhapatnam’s municipal authorities forcibly evicted thousands of street vendors, under the pretext of the ‘city’s beautification and urban development process’. This mass eviction, carried out despite the presence of a Street Vendors Act that otherwise guarantees their rights, freedom and protection, was met with widespread protests and sharp criticism from human rights forums, who argued that it violated both statutory and constitutional guarantees for urban informal workers. The blanket nature of the eviction also revealed how planned city beautification projects frequently override rights, livelihoods and dignity of the poorest urban workers and residents, especially when legal mandates are weakly enforced or ignored altogether.

Development in this case becomes for most marginalised voices a symbol for forced displacement, destruction of livelihoods, degradation of living standards and upward mobility aspirations.

As scholar Shiv Visvanathan argued, “The critique of development (quite often) is an arena of intense political and intellectual conflict. But its principal field of battle lies outside such conventional institutions as universities, trade unions, and parties, and its dissenting voices are the grassroots.” It is true that development projects are (and have been) justified in the name of science-thinking about urban planning, family planning and forest clearing by development-industrialists. Recently, we saw how it was a term used as a cover up to reason for peace and implicitly justify the genocidal violence perpetuated against a people.

In context to urban areas, evictions have become common for aesthetical cleansing of developmental projects. A similar – and even more sweeping – wave of evictions was seen in Delhi in May 2025, where thousands of stalls were forcibly removed and longstanding shops demolished by municipal authorities.

Notably, many of those evicted possessed valid Certificates of Vending granted under the Street Vendors Act. The evictions sparked mass protests by vendors’ organisations, who decried official indifference to both the law and the human cost of “development”. Reports of harassment, immediate demolition of licensed vending stalls, and lack of notice or resettlement highlight a deep disconnect between the intent of India’s urban laws and their brutal everyday enforcement.

Together, these incidents represent not isolated lapses, but a systemic pattern in Indian cities where the urban poor, migrants and minorities are treated as expendable obstacles to development, rather than as citizens with rights to dignity and due process – a trend now called out by the international community.

UN experts have openly condemned mass demolitions targeting minorities and slum dwellers in Indian cities, pointing to the deepening vulnerability and rights violations suffered by marginalised urban groups. The UN warned that these practices “do not just erase buildings—they erase lives, stability, and dignity”, calling on the Indian government to halt these unlawful and discriminatory evictions and fully respect the housing and livelihood rights of all, especially those from vulnerable communities.

India’s meteoric urban expansion has transformed city landscapes, but at a steep cost for those least positioned to claim the benefits. Migrant workers, unregistered street vendors and slum-dwellers jostle for survival amid policies that prioritise real estate interests, big infrastructure and middle-class aesthetics.

For millions, the reality of urbanisation is not access or opportunity, but exclusion – spatial, social and economic. Informal settlements balloon as under-resourced cities fail to keep pace with population growth, relegating the urban poor to marginal, unsanitary and often dangerous living spaces

A patchwork of policies and statutes – the most prominent being the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 – has attempted to shield informal workers from exploitation. Unfortunately, in practice, these rights are rarely realised.

Major cities routinely neglect essential provisions: Town Vending Committees are under-represented or never convened; permits remain unissued; designated vendor spaces are absent, and grievance redressal, though mandated, is ignored or under-resourced. The gap between law and implementation not only exposes urban labourers to municipal harassment and extortion but also often leads to their wholesale removal during beautification or redevelopment drives.

Likewise, schemes intended for migrant and unregistered workers, such as the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, remain toothless. For India’s internal migrants, urban relocation is a double-edged sword—hope entwined with hardship. Migrant workers trek from village to city, seeking better wages and opportunities.

Yet, their arrival opens up new kinds of vulnerability. Most migrants inhabit informal settlements excluded from official planning and basic services: water, sanitation, and fair wages are withheld on technicalities. Enforcement is limited; the onus of survival falls squarely on the vulnerable themselves. Urban development policies rarely address these root problems. Instead, cities have grown more exclusionary, with service access such as healthcare, housing, and education becoming dependent on formal documentation, legal tenure, and political patronage.

Street vendors embody India’s informal urban economy, servicing millions and underpinning city food systems. But their daily reality is precarious. Legal promises exist; actual protection is rare. As in Visakhapatnam, municipal authorities can – and do – evict vendors en masse.

Vendors frequently face demands for bribes, sporadic confiscation of wares and outright violence. With less than one-fifth of street vendors in legal compliance (a consequence of procedural delays and prohibitive costs), the majority remain targets for extortion and punitive action. Newspapers are replete with stories where police and planners justify removals by invoking spurious technicalities or “clean city” imperatives.

Marginalised urban groups such as Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis and new migrants routinely suffer both overt and institutional discrimination. The caste system, long thought to be waning in urban India, actually persists in new guises: from residential segregation to labour market exclusion.

Major cities feature “ghettoised” neighbourhoods, where minorities are concentrated amid failing public services and chronic unemployment. Muslims in particular are shunted into enclaves lacking legal recognition or municipal investment, deepening cycles of poverty and social exclusion.

These realities of exclusion are institutional as much as they are interpersonal. Urbanisation, while promising mobility, frequently enables new forms of marginalisation. Policies on land, housing and registration become tools for withdrawal or denial, rather than inclusion

Urban India's future depends on transforming exclusionary policies into truly inclusive frameworks. Drawing from successful international examples, key takeaways emerge to guide reforms for street vendors, migrants and informal workers. First, cities that have managed to integrate street vendors effectively show the importance of clear legal recognition and licensing systems.

Singapore offers a prominent example: its hawker policy mandates all vendors be licensed by the National Environment Agency (NEA), which also regulates locations in coordination with urban redevelopment authorities. Vendors must follow strict hygiene and environmental standards but benefit from secure, legally sanctioned spaces in well-maintained hawker centres across the city.

This approach balances public health, urban order and vendors’ economic rights, preventing arbitrary evictions while providing stable avenues for business. In India, although the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, mandates licensing and Town Vending Committees, implementation is generally poor and inconsistent across states.

A scalable model with defined roles, accountability and vendor participation, as seen in Singapore, would create legal certainty and reduce exploitation.

Another lesson lies in the establishment of dedicated vending zones or markets, where municipal authorities provide designated spots along with basic amenities like waste disposal, water, and electricity. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had launched a plan for 500 street-vending hubs last year based partly on these international lessons. These hubs will provide structured support and space to vendors, improving livelihoods, hygiene, and urban order. Early examples, like weekly markets in cities following the Bangkok and Latin American models, suggest this approach can balance inclusivity with urban functionality.

Sustainable urban inclusion requires meaningful participation of street vendors and marginalised actors in the planning and regulation processes. Singapore includes vendor representatives in decision-making forums, ensuring compliance with regulations does not come at the cost of livelihoods.  India’s Street Vendors Act similarly mandates Town Vending Committees with vendor representatives. However, inadequate representation and weak enforcement often reduce these committees to rubber stamps. Strengthening committees through legal empowerment, capacity-building, and ensuring at least 40% vendor membership in decision bodies can make urban governance more transparent and just.

In Visvanathan’s words, we are realists now. “Many in the Third World, both marginals and elites, want the goods of the ‘developed’ world. Yet the growing cost of this, the lack of access to it, will (and is) become a source of violence. The battle between tradition and modernity is accelerating and combining the worst of each."

Urban India’s future will depend on bridging the chasm between legal provisions and lived realities, a process demanding bold, participatory reform. It is vital to strengthen and enforce existing protections (such as the Street Vendors Act), create transparent and accountable Town Vending Committees, and design grievance redressal accessible to all.

Migrant and informal workers must receive official recognition, housing rights, and basic services as a matter of justice, not patronage. Only then can India's cities fulfil the promise of growth with dignity, justice, and inclusion, reimagining the urban space not as a marketplace for the privileged, but as a home for everyone.

Namesh Killemsetty is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Academic Affairs) at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University.

Deepanshu Mohan is a professor of economics, dean, IDEAS, and director, Centre for New Economics Studies. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and an academic visiting fellow with AMES, University of Oxford.

Najam Us Saqib is a Phd scholar at Central University of Kashmir. He is a Senior Research Analyst with Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), OP Jindal Global University.

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