The Book

Read Book Highlights

View Photographs & Video

Interact With Us

Contributors

Get Your Own Copy 

Download Now – Media Toolkit

Check These Links

Email Your Friends!

Media Reviews

The Book

Research Methodology

The research team approached the issues with a two-pronged tool. The first task was to discover, explore and analyze what happens at the ground level. The second requirement was to research the regulatory apparatus governing it. Each of the chapters of Law, Liberty and Livelihood offers a mix of these.

To discover what happens on the ground, the researchers spent time, thought and sweat in interacting with people and observing events. To find about the regulatory apparatus the researchers spent hours collecting and poring through innumerable documents (Acts, guidelines, copies of licenses, media reports) not easily accessible to the general public. 

And in order to figure out the context of these problems with that of the global scenario, we referred contemporary literature that could showcase policy solutions to these problems. 

For example, the chapter on street hawking had the researchers carrying out surveys on street vendors in two different settings. One, the stretch in front of the Safdarjung Hospital which is largely illegal for hawking and two, the Lajpat Nagar Market which is a mix of legal shops and illegal hawkers. The questions asked included the amount of money incurred to pay the costs of illegality and the amount they would be willing to pay for the same area of business were it legal. The chapter also has studies on hawkers from other parts of Delhi and the major cities of India. We also look at policies that have been carried out to deal with this situation and why they have failed, especially in terms of land use allocation.  

For those interested please take a look at the Plan of Action which was used for the research work on the chapters of Shop Licensing, Cycle Rickshaw and etc.