[Reader-list] Licensing and Space

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Continuing the discussion around licensing for programmers...

In a recent email to me by Joy (joy at sarai.net), he made a very pertinent 
point.

According to him there are countless professions that are licensed 
(lawyers, doctors, architects, chartered accountants etc) also, large 
amount of products are licensed with marks (like the ISO marks, or now 
enviormental stamps etc). Keeping this in view, he wonders why I am 
objecting to programmers being licensed. His basic argument is that 
licensing per se needs to looked at or we will not be extending the 
argument to the necessary limits.

Interestingly, when listening to some hawkers and rickhaw-pullers recently 
speak onthe immediate need for disbanding the licensing rules on their 
profession, I was struck by a strange parallel between urban space and 
virtual space. At present Delhi has about 4 lakh rickshawpullers, out of 
which only 1 lakh are licensed. What this means is that 75% of these 
rickshaw pullers are under constant threat of being robbed of their 
livelihood. Also, since parking for rickshaw pullers is not provided for in 
the street legal structure, all these persons are under constant threat of 
eviction and detention by the police. The same is the case with a very 
large section of street hawkers. This population - which supplies the 
majority of our urban population with fast-food and other things of utility 
- is again divided into legal and illegal by the working of licenses and 
urban space usage laws.

The most important point these people was making is very simple: anybody 
can become a street hawker (all for the question of livlihood) and it 
should not need licenses. What is needed is a recognition of the profession 
and adequate urban space allocated for these activities. This factor, of 
entering a space and working on it - and in it - without licenses is very 
central to crores of people in urban India.

The central problem is that urban planning and regulation are the work of 
the elites who define what is the usage of space going to be, and who will 
have access for it. For this the arguments of public health, aesthetics, 
morality, productivity, etc are mobilised and used. I think the same is 
happening in the domain of vitual space. A serious attempt is being made to 
organise and plan the space, with adequate gatekeepers and sentries posted.