"While political scientists and theorists in India have engaged extensively with the need for greater political rights and freedom, there has been far less attention paid to issues of economic freedom. Political freedom has thus been understood in a very narrow sense of free and fair elections, right to representation in political institutions and decentralization of decision-making in civic affairs. The issue of economic rights and freedoms has predominantly been viewed through the prism of class struggle, with the state being projected as the sole 'protector' of the weak and vulnerable sections of society from the greed and exploitation of the rich and powerful. The bureaucracy avidly imbibed this Nehruvian bias because it facilitated the concentration of vast, arbitrary powers in its own hands.

Neither our economists nor our political theorists have tried to come to grips with the often predatory role of the State and how it works hard to wreck people's livelihoods and their self-confidence. Without economic freedom, whatever political freedom we have becomes an empty ritual. That is a major reason why, despite such an actively involved electorate, Indian political democracy remains deeply flawed and has become hostage to anti-social elements. Since our intellectuals and media remain obsessed mainly with the political and electoral dimensions of democracy, they have more or less ignored the systematic and routine loot, extortion, violence, and indignities suffered by our people as they go about perfectly legitimate economic pursuits.

The livelihood concerns of the vast majority of our people remain marginalized even in the minds of those pushing for economic reforms because the agenda of economic reforms has remained obsessively focused on the entry of transnational corporations, the concerns of the Indian corporate sector, and the fate of government-run public enterprises, as they prepare to deal with a market open to competition. We cannot afford to overlook the fact that Indian and foreign corporations and the PSUs together provide employment to no more than 3% per cent of our population. As against about 10% who are self-employed in Europe and America, the vast majority of people in India (more than 90 %) work in the unorganized sector and the vast majority is still self-employed.

My presentation will focus on the absurd laws and regulations governing the livelihoods of two of the most visible and numerically large group of self employed poor in urban areas - namely street vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers - as illustrative examples of how needless bureaucratic controls trap the hard working poor in a web of illegality and make them victims of massive extortion rackets."