India is a nation of walkers - but its cities forgot themImage source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, Around 45 million people walk to work every day, according to census-based estimatesBySoutik BiswasIndia correspondentPublished16 minutes agoFor much of my life, walking in Indian cities has felt less like exercising a right than negotiating an obstacle course.I grew up in Kolkata, where wide pavements disappeared beneath rows of hawkers. I moved to Delhi, where roads seemed designed almost exclusively for cars. Now I live in Gurugram, where footpaths vanish into rubble and garbage, are abruptly blocked by parked vehicles or construction, or sit uncomfortably high above the road.So when India's Supreme Court declared in June that the right to walk safely on designated footpaths was a fundamental right, external, it felt less like judicial activism than common sense arriving decades late.Walking is the most democratic form of transport. Yet it is also the one India's cities have neglected most consistently.It's remarkable because India remains, above all, a nation of walkers. Around 45 million people walk to work every day, according to census-based estimates, compared with only about 5.4 million who commute in private cars, jeeps or vans.Nearly a third of urban workers walk to work, while virtually every bus or metro journey begins and ends on foot. Add school runs, shopping trips and other everyday journeys, and walking dominates urban mobility. A 2019 survey of selected cities found that 63% of all journeys were made on foot, making pedestrians the single largest group of road users.Many are what researchers call "captive pedestrians" - people who walk not by choice but because they cannot afford another option. Women are especially dependent on walking. Yet the people who contribute least to congestion and pollution often face the greatest risks.Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, A woman walks past poles and wires strewn across a footpath in ChennaiThe evidence is harrowing. Even where pavements exist, they are often broken, narrow or inaccessible to older people, children and those with disabilities.They are also blocked by motorcycles, swallowed by parked cars, encroachments or excavated for utility works. Faded zebra crossings are treated as little more than road markings no-one respects. Flyovers speed traffic while forcing pedestrians into hazardous detours below. A landmark 2011 study of six Indian cities found that India's streets routinely fail pedestrians because of "poor and unsafe" infrastructure.The Walkability in Indian Cities report by the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) gave the surveyed cities a median walkability score of just 47 out of 100, with the worst conditions around public transport terminals - ironically the places where most journeys begin and end on footAs Geetam Tiwari, a transport scholar at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi puts it, pedestrians have been "pushed to the margins of the road networks" forcing them to "jostle for space with motor vehicles".The price is paid in lives.Officially pedestrians account for roughly a fifth of road deaths, external, but independent studies cited by Tiwari estimate the share is closer to 30-40%.Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, Motorcyclists riding on a pedestrian footpath along a bridge in DelhiPedestrians are also the second-largest group of road accident victims after two-wheeler riders. In Delhi and Mumbai, they account for more than half of all road deaths. According to a World Bank study, crashes already cost India an estimated 3-5% of its GDP each year through lost productivity, healthcare costs and disability.The Supreme Court case arose from one such tragedy: a five-year-old boy crushed by a truck while walking to school with his father.The judges responded with unusual eloquence. Walking, Justice PS Narasimha wrote, is "the simplest of the simple human activity, inextricably connected to life". Roads therefore impose a corresponding duty on the state to provide safe footpaths. "The fundamental right to walk on demarcated footpaths shall override the privilege of a motorised vehicle," he declared.The judgment challenges decades of Indian urban planning, where progress has often been measured in kilometres of expressways, flyovers and elevated corridors. Streets were engineered to move vehicles as quickly as possible, while the one road user every citizen inevitably becomes - the pedestrian - largely disappeared from planners' imagination."People know about the latest cars, but walking has become invisible," says Rishi Aggarwal, who has spent more than a decade trying to change that mindset in Mumbai.Through city walks and public talks, his advocacy group, Walking Project, encourages residents to notice what they have stopped seeing: broken pavements, blocked crossings and unsafe junctions - and compare them with the standards pedestrians are entitled to expect. "When people become apathetic, they stop observing the street," he says.Image source, NurPhoto via Getty ImagesImage caption, Zebra crossings - like this one in Kolkata - are treated as little more than road markings In a city where an estimated 15 million walking trips are made every day, Aggarwal argues, it is not just footpaths that have disappeared from view, but also the millions of people who depend on them.For Rahul Goel, a transportation researcher at Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the problem begins with governance. "Are footpaths maintained and cleaned? Does the city ensure they aren't encroached upon?" he says. "In Delhi, many roads do have footpaths, but they're often unusable because of poor governance."Poor design makes matters worse. Cars parked perpendicular to the kerb often conceal footpaths or block them altogether, while vehicles parked directly on pavements are a common sight. Footpaths are often too narrow for the number of pedestrians. 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