PANAJI
Vendors of Goa’s traditional vegetables and flowers face an existential risk as they are being forced out due a combination of regulatory enforcement and increasing barriers that prevent local small scale farmers from marketing their produce, according to a study by economics researchers published in the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies.
The study surveyed more than 300 roadside vendors -- almost all of whom were women selling locally grown vegetables and flowers, that are unavailable, except at traditional markets, and drew up a mathematical model to scale each vendor’s business sustainability depending on a host of factors including profitability and ability to access customers.
“A majority of those vendors whom we surveyed were found to score low on the sustainability index -- that is to suggest that their business will not sustain beyond a few years unless adequate interventions are brought in by the government,” Dr Renji George Amballoor, the deputy director of Higher Education, who pioneered the study said.
Dr Amballoor and his co-author Dr Shekhar Naik, visited and interviewed more than 300 vendors who sit along highways and other major roads in Goa to ascertain the factors that threaten their presence along the roadsides.
“Most of these vegetables sold by the farmers are indigenous vegetables and aren’t available either in supermarkets or even in major markets as they are pushed out by other more popular varieties that are grown on a larger scale,” Amballoor said.
The women generally sell locally grown varieties of flowers that aren’t sold in popular flower markets like zaio (Spanish jasmine or Jasminum grandiflorum) or local varieties of vegetables including sweet potatoes, local radish, red amarnath, green beans, churan and even forest produce.
“We found that the biggest factor is the ambivalent legal framework under which they operate. They face harassment from public authorities who on grounds that they are ‘illegal,’ -- often without any warning swoop down upon them and either ask them to move away or confiscate their wares, leaving them at an utter loss,” Amballoor said.
Other factors include the lack of a storage space, meaning they have to finish their stock for the day by the end of the day, issues concerning the transportation of their wares to the point of sale and the costs involved which vary depending on the mood of the service providers.
“They also face situations in which they do distress sale, lack of facilities at the selling point and a bunch of customers who always tend to bargain with them,” he added.
The footprints of women street entrepreneurs are fast disappearing from our economy. Women street entrepreneurship provided a wonderful opportunity for inclusive growth narratives in rural areas among the economically and socially challenged sections. The advent of liberalisation–privatisation–globalisation (LPG) process robbed even the public space available to the women street entrepreneurs in Goa,” the study says.
The study has suggested the need for government intervention including state procurement through the Goa State Horticulture corporation, market expansion through CSR activities, specialised outlets to help the women entrepreneurs find new markets especially in colleges through student consumer cooperative stores, a state level database of the vendors, contract farming of local vegetables, training to local street vendors, creating expertise in organic farming, convert cluster locations into markets, provide infrastructure facilities at such clusters as well as measures to promote awareness among the consumers about the benefits of local produce including promotion of locally available vegetables with their nutritional values.
“When we set out to do the study we asked ourselves the question -- will the next generation have the opportunity to taste the indigenous foods that we are eating? The answer to that is sadly no, but the trend can be reversed with government intervention,” Dr Naik said.
