An article out recently on Aug. 24, 2014, talked about how Mumbai is learning from Singapore in the area of implementing hawker policies that could significantly improve the lives and finances of their Indian street vendors.

It made a number of observations about Singapore's rich hawker heritage that began some 60 years ago, which might have gone over Singaporeans' collective heads these days.

Here are a few points worth elucidating as Singaporeans continue to grapple with this issue of how to make hawking sustainable and situate the discussion within its historical context:

1. Traditionally, being a hawker was a way to get by while providing for the community.

In its original form, a hawker business met real needs in the community, as it helped lower unemployment levels and provided goods and services. It was not about how the business could be scalable or how it could be franchised.

The article quoted former Institute of Policy Studies Adjunct Research Associate Azhar Ghani, author of a May 2011 paper titled "A Recipe For Success: How Singapore Hawker Centres Came to Be".

It looked at how the push to get rid of hawkers from the streets of Singapore in the 1950s morphed into their relocation to proper venues, as the eradication brought about sympathy from the public, who recognised the role hawkers played.

“Hawking activities actually addressed a public need for cheap and convenient goods and services,” Ghani wrote in his paper. He adds that hawking at a stall was a family affair, which made the authorities more sensitive: any policy targeting street vendors would affect entire families.

2. Operating a hawker business meant gainful employment for family members.

One aspect of hawking that Singaporeans tend to overlook these days is that successful hawkers were in the past, family-run businesses that required the support of family members, who would then find gainful employment from the trade, which translates into a decent living for them.

From Azhar's 2011 paper:

"A study in the mid-1970s found that only 12 percent of hawkers had assistants not related to them."

Compare this with today's hawker culture, where the role of the family is not as evident.

This could partly explain why the present model of leveraging on cheap foreign labour to run food and beverage establishments in Singapore is not working out, as the costs of operating a business that could once have been absorbed by a family are now radiated externally to other parts of society.

The move away from being a family-run business has transformed hawking from a necessity into a money-making enterprise.

3. Cheap hawker food is a way the state indirectly subsidises cost of living.

The push to maintain the number of hawkers in Singapore is for practical reasons that most of us don't recognise.

Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat believes there is another reason for the authorities’ accommodation of food vendors throughout the city. "Inexpensive food keeps wages down, so it is a form of subsidising capital," said Huat, a professor at the National University of Singapore.

Therefore, acquiring food cheaply and conveniently actually makes living in Singapore tolerable.

Top photo via Wikimedia Commons

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