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Paper short abstract

Hyderabad’s street vending reveals a "paradox of inclusion": high credit disbursal alongside spatial exclusion. Drawing on Roy and Lefebvre, this paper demonstrates how the 2014 Act perpetuates regulated informality and disguised wage labor. Spatial justice is vital for vendor agency and mobility.

Paper long abstract

In rapidly urbanizing cities of the Global South, inclusion has emerged as both a moral discourse and a central governance tool in development agendas. The inclusion of street vendors in the urban space is increasingly operationalized through legal recognition and credit-based interventions, framed as pathways to entrepreneurship and mobility. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with twenty street vendors in Hyderabad, this paper argues that state-led formalization and inclusion-driven development interventions operate as regulated informality, extending financial visibility while reproducing spatial exclusion within urban space shaped by aesthetic governance and selective enforcement. Grounded in Ananya Roy’s theory of informality as governance and Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the production of space, the paper analyses how urban spatial governance in Hyderabad is operationalised through the “Street Vendors Act, 2014.” The findings further destabilise neoliberal narratives of street vending as micro-entrepreneurship, revealing that many registered loan beneficiaries function as disguised wage labourers working under asset-owning intermediaries (Seths). Empirically, it contrasts the political patronage with the infrastructure-driven planning that fragments natural markets and displaces vendors. Such relations foster spatial insecurity, making the workers' presence contingent on patronage rather than a secure right to place. By prioritizing loan disbursals over infrastructure budgeting, the municipal corporation leaves vendors financially visible yet spatially insecure, with no dedicated budget for vending zones. This paper argues that informal mobility depends less on credit than on spatial justice, advocating for development frameworks that recognize the right to urban space as a fundamental pillar of vendor agency and well-being.