Spotting his push cart on a Thane street, I stopped by when I saw him on the second day. He was selling the snack that other street hawkers too offer in Thane. I settled for the ten rupee paper cone. He weighed out fifty grams of the mix - beaten rice (poha), corn flakes, peanuts, yellow peas and black chickpeas. The weighed out mix was then put on hot sand being heated through a wood fire in an earthen stove. He let the mix stay on the sand just enough to heat it and when it was ready scooped it out with a perforated ladle and filtered out the sand. The snack was packed in a paper cone and given to me for ten rupees. For just ten rupees I had got a protein rich snack that was spiced with a Chilly paste and made tangy. Like millions of other street hawkers, Suraj Bali Yadav, runs a micro business that has good profit margin while delivering a useful service to society. With all the hype about startups a glaring omission of media is the lack of appreciation of street level micro enterprises which need extremely low investment
