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This is the third article in a three-part series based on a field project to understand informal work in Kashmir and its impact on vulnerability and marginalisation amongst vendors. Focusing on two critical city-markets of Batamaloo and Hazratbal Dargah in Srinagar, the series looks at how informal workers negotiate livelihood, precarity and everyday life in a socially and politically sensitive region. Read part 1 and part 2.

The informal market in India is often portrayed as one of the most accessible segments of the economy. With relatively low capital requirements and few formal barriers to entry, success is commonly assumed to depend on effort, persistence and entrepreneurial initiative. Yet our survey of informal vendors in Srinagar suggests a more complicated reality. Beneath the apparent openness of street vending lie distinct hierarchies of risk, access and opportunity.

The survey reveals that these inequalities are not random. Access to vending spaces, exposure to harassment, ownership of productive assets and earning opportunities are all distributed unevenly across vendors. What emerges is an informal economy governed by its own hierarchies, where security, bargaining power and opportunity are shaped by far more than individual effort alone. One of the clearest examples can be seen in the relationship between informal payments and vendor security.

More than 80% of vendors who reported payment-related arrangements also reported frequent harassment. Here, harassment primarily refers to being asked to move or shift their carts, which authorities generally explain as necessary when roads or passages are blocked.

Those assigned space by an authority figure also reported harassment, approximately 32%. Vendors with long-term arrangements reported more harassment than those with official contracts. At the same time, vendors who are well connected with local authorities claim to receive greater respect and better treatment.

These findings do not establish bribery or identify any........

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