4 min readJul 6, 2026 03:26 PM IST
First published on: Jul 6, 2026 at 03:26 PM IST
The little girl in a T-shirt and cotton trousers gently opened her yellow, polka-dotted umbrella to avoid one loose spoke tearing into the polyester. Sheltered from the rain, she pranced about on the footpath, twirling the umbrella to send the raindrops at the end of the spokes scattering around.
It brought out the girl in me, reviving memories of a similar frolic when I received my first umbrella, a pink one, from dad during my school years. Would I shed inhibitions and join the little girl with my umbrella? I would have loved to, but just like the spoke had come undone in the girl’s umbrella, I have snapped ligaments in one ankle, which force me to tread with care on broken footpaths.
I’m particularly wary of the dislodged interlocking tiles on our footpaths, gingerly sidestepping them lest the ankle buckle again. Walking on our footpaths is certainly no pleasure. Worse, the absence of the footpath itself can have serious consequences. In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court recognised the need for safe, demarcated footpaths as a fundamental constitutional right while hearing a man’s plea for compensation after his five-year-old son was killed by a tanker while walking on the road.
According to recent news reports, as many as 36,000 pedestrians were killed in accidents on Indian roads in 2024. And as per the Road Safety Network’s white paper for 2025, India continues to lose 1.7 lakh lives annually to road accidents, with pedestrians, cyclists and two-wheeler riders at greatest risk.
Remember when the ignored footpath of today was a muse for filmmakers and lyricists? Raj Kapoor as Raju in the 1950s romanticized the footpath in Awaara for his songs, dreams and basic dwelling. Later, in Chhoti Si Baat (1970s), South Mumbai’s footpaths witnessed the heartwarming courtship of Arun (Amol Palekar) following Prabha (Vidya Sinha) around, hesitant to profess his love but not knowing that she knew about his interest. In Rajnigandha, Deepa (again Vidya Sinha) immersed herself in her thoughts on the footpath, contemplating two suitors.
Over time, the footpath has been lost to traffic congestion, encroachment and unplanned infrastructure. In many Indian cities, it becomes a getaway for two-wheelers in heavy traffic situations, works as a parking bay or hosts makeshift chai tapris. While municipal squads have been acting against illegal shop extensions and mobile hawkers to ensure footpaths remain encroachment-free, city administrators have taken the SC’s ruling seriously by initiating measures to repair broken footpaths and ensure the pedestrian’s right of way.
It’s imperative that our footpaths are well-maintained as they are an important connection to the several new modes of transport that have been introduced in cities, like the metro. The number of cities with metro connectivity has risen from five in 2014 to 26 in 2025 and the daily ridership has shot up from around 28 lakh passengers to more than 1.15 crore over that period.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has recently initiated its Movement 26.2 challenge in which adults walking 30 minutes a day for a month — totalling 26.2 miles (a marathon distance) — would be eligible for rewards and discounts. The NHS is concerned that one in six deaths in the UK is due to lack of physical activity. Here, we aren’t even asking for such incentives — all we want is good footpaths to walk on.
With better implementation of existing policies, we could perhaps ensure that the monsoon gambol of the little girl with the yellow umbrella on the footpath is no longer an exception.
The writer is senior editor, The Indian Express. anuradha.mascarenhas@expressindia.com
Walking on our footpaths is certainly no pleasure. Worse, the absence of the footpath itself can have serious consequences. 
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