Days after papers reported about a clean-up operation against hawkers, in Bandra especially, there are a few takeaways even as the overriding and justifiable response is that they will be back in a few days.

We see that citizens, who are long inured to the boomerang effect which means cleaning up the streets of hawkers only to see that they are back, were hugely sceptical of these initiatives anyway. There were also several interesting points. Some shop owners were helping hawkers by giving them space to store goods (for a fee of course). Then, there were also some housing societies that allowed hawkers to store their wares. This too, one presumes, after payment.