Survival to Dignity? The Precarious Livelihood of Street Food Vendors in South Mumbai and Their Path Toward Decent Work

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The theoretical framing is generally well-intentioned but lacks precision. The paper introduces several concepts—gender attitudes, religiosity, and traditionalism, but they are not always clearly defined or differentiated. As a result, it is difficult to follow how the hypotheses emerge logically from the literature. The authors should refine the theoretical argument, clarify what aspects of religiosity they are measuring, and specify how these are expected to influence gender attitudes in the particular context under study. The literature review is somewhat repetitive and could be streamlined to emphasize recent, high-quality studies that directly support the hypotheses.

From a methodological perspective, the study design and data sources are not sufficiently transparent. It is unclear how participants were recruited, what sampling method was used, and whether the data are representative of the population. The operationalization of key variables also requires clarification. Some scales and composite measures are mentioned but not described in enough detail to judge their validity. Moreover, the analytical strategy is not always justified; the rationale for model selection and control variables should be explained more clearly. Tables should include standard errors, significance levels, and effect sizes to help readers assess the robustness of the results.

The results section presents statistical findings but with limited interpretation. The paper would benefit from a clearer distinction between statistical significance and substantive importance. At times, very small coefficients are interpreted as meaningful effects without sufficient discussion of their practical or social implications. The discussion section, in turn, tends to restate findings rather than connect them back to the theoretical framework or existing debates. The authors could use this section

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of “Survival to Dignity….”

This is an interesting paper that needs a little more development. The data collection is very good and multi-method (though a few details are missing). The results suggest that there is a great deal of variation in the viability of street vending and that street vendors face a litany of pressures associated with informal employment.

There are several issues that need to be addressed. First, while the author(s) claim they randomly sampled street vendors, they don’t really tell us how they do it. Did you go out into the streets and pick every 10^th vendor you met? Do you do this on a specific day of the week in each place? Etc. Did anyone turn you down and, if so, how did you select replacements?

Second, the only reason your R-Square for your earnings equation is so high is because of the relationship with average daily expenditure. But there’s a pretty serious causality problem here – wouldn’t one spend more in anticipation of receiving more business/revenues in the first place? These aren’t really independent measures in a line of work like this (one doesn’t expend today in anticipation of someone buying more food next month – the time horizon is too long). There are three ways to deal with this. First, you could drop the measure of daily expenditure. Second, you could subtract daily expenditure from reported income and use that as the dependent variable. Third (this might be more interesting) you could turn average daily expenditure into a dependent variable itself.

Third, the correlation between age and duration in the business is too high for them both to be in a regression equation at the same kind (unless you have multicollinearity diagnostics suggesting otherwise, which they won’t). Duration depends on age. The negative age effect is totally due to age being in the equation with duration. If you take duration out of your model and the age effect is positive, that seals the diagnosis.

Fourth, I think the interview data could be exploited more than they presently are. We have a good picture of what the vendors face, yet the analysis is premised on the idea that the ILO wants to make their working life better. What do the vendors think would make their work life better? One possibility, it would seem, is to ditch the regulatory environment almost altogether. But, and this is something I hadn’t realized until I read the paper, increasing vendors’ incomes probably can’t be done without increasing prices unless governments do something to significantly lower expenses. Wouldn’t this drive away a significant percentage of customers? It appears that the vendors don’t simply service the elite and upper-middle classes that work in office buildings.

A little more engagement with the focus groups would improve the value of the findings considerably.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See attached comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks for your productive comments. Please see our response in the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is substantially improved and the authors have addressed the comments in my initial referee report. The new regression results presented in Table 3 are also much improved. However the interpretation of these results is still somewhat lacking. 

In the paragraph starting on line 459, the authors state "the duration of engagement in street vending shows a negative coefficient, suggesting that more years in the business are associated with lower outcomes on the dependent variable. Initial investment also has a negative effect, indicating that higher investment does not improve performance." 

This interpretation appears to miss the fundamental interpretation of a regression coefficient estimate. The dependent variable is Average Daily Expenditures on materials, fuel, etc. (effectively the vendor's variable costs). The regressions also control for average number of customers and average earnings. As such, conditional on the number of customers and earnings (i.e., conditional on the volume of sales), having lower daily expenditures is a good thing. Higher initial investment lowers daily costs, as does being in business longer. For two vendors serving the same number of customers and bringing in the same earnings, the one with a higher initial investment has lower daily expenditures (similarly, the one in business longer has lower daily expenditures). Being able to operate with lower daily expenditures, all else equal, is a good thing for a vendor's profitability. 

Higher daily expenditures from higher customer volume and higher earnings is still a good thing, but that is a necessary relationship due to the fact that serving a higher volume of customers will require more materials and naturally increase daily expenditures. 

The two sentences on lines 465-468 should better address this point. Similarly, the authors appear to return to this point on line 568 in the conclusion. The authors state "our findings suggest that better current business performance, rather than past investment or years of experience, is more strongly associated with improved outcomes for vendors." In contrast, as I explained above, more investment and more years of experience are associated with improved outcomes (lower daily expenditures, conditional on customer volume).

If the authors fix their interpretation of the regression results such they are consistent with fundamental economics -- the fact that conditional on a given quantity of sales (customers), lower production costs are good -- then I think the paper will be in good shape.  

Author Response

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