Street vendors constitute the most significant and deprived segment of the country’s unorganised sector. Among vendors, the condition of Dalit, women, and child vendors is the most horrific, depressed, and necessitous. Other than being a source of self-employment for the poor, vending is vital to provide convenient, affordable services to the urban populace. It is ironic that the current laws, schemes, and policies are awfully unsympathetic, hostile, and unreceptive towards the ordeals of this section of the urban population. This paper attempts to explore and expose the vulnerability, fragility, and marginalisation of this section under faulty urban governance and development practices by tracking their lives, pains, and plight as vendors.
