
A long way to reclaim streets for pedestrians
Invoking Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, the apex court asked all states and Union Territories to finalise guidelines within two months and file compliance reports, which will be heard on August 1.
Over the years, some cities have made progress but improvements in walking infrastructure remained localised and not easily scalable. Cautioning that political and administrative inconsistencies hindered decision-making and policy implementation, experts emphasise the urgency for rethinking mobility to pursue the walkability agenda.
Pedestrians in the mobility pyramid
Pedestrians deserve a fair share of road space. They have the numbers, and space is not a constraint because India has the world's second-largest road network after the US. But an audit directed by the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety showed that in 2024, only 56% of Delhi roads had footpaths. A similar trend was observed in all other cities surveyed.
Footpaths are the backbone of mobility and a measure of urban liveability. They ensure the safety of pedestrians, the most vulnerable of all road users. They provide access to bus and Metro stations and make local destinations such as shops, parks, schools, and medical facilities walkable. A well-planned footpath network can reduce reliance on vehicles, offering health and environmental benefits. It is also a vibrant social space.
Building a footpath involves easy masonry work and no big investment. Its maintenance only ensures that the walkways are not dug up, rutted, littered, or used as a toilet, parking lot, or unregulated vending space. Yet, even as footpaths are neglected, a broken walkway rarely triggers the same public outcry as a potholed road.
False perception
Poor-quality footpaths are a political problem rather than a technical one, said Rutul Joshi, an associate professor at CEPT University. He argued that concerns such as street vendors and parked vehicles are often offered as excuses for not planning wide enough footpaths. This 'in-your-face, unapologetic position', said Joshi, is reflected in the absence of walkable footpaths in much of Ahmedabad, except for some stray exceptions such as Chimanlal Girdharlal Road. This retail hub was renovated in the mid-1990s with boulevard-style walkways and refurbished in 2019 with 10-foot-wide multi-utility zones, including footpaths.
Cars hog the road space, and car owners dominate the public discourse. 'This group is often reluctant to yield even a small amount of road space to others,' said Shekhar Singh, the municipal commissioner of Pimpri Chinchwad, a Tier-2 industrial city in Maharashtra that actively promotes non-motorised transport (NMT).
'Even efforts to convert the leftmost part of the road, which is often a dusty strip where no vehicles run and only people walk, into a footpath are met with resistance from motorists.'
Design standards optional
The Indian Road Congress (IRC), a 91-year-old apex body of highway engineers, sets frameworks, and road-building agencies across the country are expected to follow them. The 'Guidelines for Pedestrian Safety', revised in 2022, say all streets with vehicular speeds exceeding 15 kmph should have segregated pedestrian space. If the roads are too narrow for a footpath, design shared streets with speed bumps to calm traffic.
The pedestrian zone must be continuous, with a uniform height of 150 mm, and a width of 1.8 to 2.5 meters, depending on land use. The space must accommodate two wheelchair users simultaneously and be entirely free of obstructions.
However, IRC guidelines are not statutory, so there is nothing illegal about not following them. But even where they are followed, they are applied selectively, said Abhijit Lokre of The Urban Lab Foundation in Ahmedabad. 'The engineers will ensure that the carriageways are built as per IRC, but they will never insist that the footpath be according to IRC.'
The SC road safety committee audit showed that in Delhi, which has some of the broadest road spaces in the country, only 26% pavements were of the width and height required by IRC standards.
Free for all
As a result, footpaths are too narrow and obstructed by poles, pillars, signage, power transformers, bus stops and toilets. In places, stormwater drains covered precariously with slabs are passed off as walkways.
The road department often decides the dimensions, with no drawings, just instructions to the contractor, explained Ranjit Gadgil, programme director of Parisar, a Pune-based non-governmental organisation advocating road safety. Since there is no approval at the design stage, holding anyone accountable for bad footpaths is difficult.
Each city has its peculiar challenges. In Patiala, for example, some roads have been resurfaced to the same height as the footpaths. With no segregation, pedestrians find themselves walking in the path of moving traffic, said Ravee Singh Ahluwalia, founder of Patiala Foundation, a non-profit working on road safety. Patiala was the first district in Punjab to recognise the 'Right to Walk' as a fundamental right under Article 21 and notify a district-level policy on walkability in 2023.
Walkers edged out
Where footpaths exist, shopkeepers and occupants of adjacent properties encroach on them. While street vendors are the most frequently blamed, more physical damage is done by parked vehicles and two-wheelers taking shortcuts.
A retired civil engineer from Delhi said road-owning agencies sometimes deliberately raise the height of footpaths so cars and two-wheelers can't climb them. In safeguarding footpaths from illegal parking, they also make them inaccessible to pedestrians.
Apart from policies to promote NMT, many cities, such as Delhi (2019), Bengaluru (2021), Pune (2016), and Ahmedabad (2023), have formulated parking regulations. Delhi's policy on walkability, which was also notified in August 2019, has strong elements of parking reforms, but there's little to show in progress.
Subterranean chaos
Urban roads are more than just traffic facilitators. They support eight infrastructure networks: water, drainage, sewerage, electricity, piped gas, optical fibre, streetlights, and traffic surveillance, said Srikanth Viswanathan, executive director of Jana Urban Space Foundation.
The drains and sewer lines under the footpath often leak, backflow, or hit dead ends, damaging the surface. Multiple agencies control underground pipes, making it difficult to pinpoint faults. Dug-up footpaths are not only a walking hazard, but the unending road-cutting and repairs also alter the original design and dimensions of footpaths for good.
Formulated in 2011, Jana Urban Space Foundation's Tender S.U.R.E. (Specifications for Urban Roads Execution) guidelines offer solutions. They suggest utilities below be arranged in underground corridors with easy access points, that lane widths be uniform, and that financial sustainability be achieved through joint tendering and the prevention of road cutting.
'While the first Tender S.U.R.E road, built in front of UB City (an upscale high-rise complex), was privately funded, we have since had five successive chief ministers across three political parties supporting the guidelines. Today, Bengaluru has over 100 kms of such roads and footpaths, all funded by the state government,' said Viswanathan.
According to Jana Urban Space, more than 250 km of Tender S.U.R.E. roads and footpaths are under various stages of implementation across 18 cities in five states in India, including Karnataka, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam.
Beyond engineering
Viswanathan said that instead of leaving roads to civil engineers, who focus on moving motor vehicles and not people, city administrations must give the job to urban designers, who can incorporate citizen-centricity and environmental considerations.
However, very few cities have attempted to bring urban designers on board. In 2017, the Pune Municipal Corporation made a head start by creating an urban design cell and hiring professionals under its urban street design programme. Unfortunately, Lokre said, the initiative stopped when the top officials moved out.
In March this year, the Maharashtra government announced a plan to establish urban design cells in all urban civic bodies. While the primary goal of these cells would be to preserve cultural and architectural aesthetics, it is hoped that street design will eventually be included in the mandate, and urban designers will get hired on a permanent basis.
Change management and continuity
Successful policy implementation requires alignment among administrators. Shekhar Singh said that in Pimpri Chinchwad, the 'urban streetscaping' projects are progressing because three consecutive commissioners have maintained momentum from planning to execution.
But it is not dependent on commissioners alone. Cities must have a strong team with the right people to maintain institutional memory. So, last year, PCMC set up an urban mobility department with a dedicated budget. Led by a joint city engineer, it includes transport planners, urban designers and multiple experts.
Additionally, to fund Harit Setu, a flagship project to promote the 15-minute city concept and connect all facilities through walking and cycling infrastructure, PCMC on June 10 listed its green municipal bond on the Bombay Stock Exchange and raised ₹ 200 crores. PCMC successfully raised ₹200 crore through the green bond, which was oversubscribed 5.13 times.
In Punjab, the Road Traffic Institute Centre was established in 2022 under a high court order. It collaborates with 12 agencies to enhance walking infrastructure throughout the state. Acknowledging that 'bureaucratic hurdles sometimes slow down progress,' Punjab's traffic adviser and the centre's director Navdeep Asija emphasised that institutions such as this help maintain continuity.
For now, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and SAS Nagar-Mohali have been identified as the 'demonstration sites', where 120 kms of arterial roads once fixed will provide the template of 'walkable streets' to the rest of Punjab. While several districts, including Patiala and Jalandhar, have adopted the Right to Walk policy, the overall state-level draft still awaits legislative approval.
Mukti Advani, a principal scientist at the Central Road Research Institute, stressed the need for evaluations in policy, budget, and infrastructure to identify gaps and enhance user satisfaction. Such audits, she said, will highlight gaps and help authorities improve.
The IRC guidelines suggest a walk score to assess the pedestrian experience, considering factors such as traffic volume, shade, streetlights, security, walking surface, encroachment, public amenities, and accessibility features.
Chennai's example
Chennai was India's first city to adopt a non-motorised transport (NMT) policy in 2014, with the mandate that 60% of transport funds would go towards street transformation.
Between 2014 and 2019, Chennai invested an average of ₹72 crore annually in footpaths. It created over 170 km of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. But the pace slowed down when the city shifted its focus to stormwater management to address frequent flooding, pointed out Aswathy Dilip, director South-Asia at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).
Between 2022 and 2025, footpath spending dropped to just ₹13 crore per year on average, with a modest recovery in FY 2024–25 to ₹25 crore. 'This was also when the city consistently spent ₹84 crore annually on road resurfacing and carriageway upgrades—highlighting a continued vehicle-centric bias,' she pointed out.
But there's been a renewed push: This year alone, the city has committed an investment of ₹200 crores for developing 170 kms of complete streets. Dilip also highlighted a lack of coordination among departments, leading to issues like dismantling footpaths without restoration during stormwater drain upgrades.
However, the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority, established in 2010 but becoming active only a decade later, has emerged as a platform for coordinated action across multiple agencies and jurisdictions, said Dilip. The impact of these changes will be visible over five to ten years.
A national push
Just as sanitation, toilets, and other civic upgrades have been prioritised on the national agenda, Viswanathan sought a similar effort for urban roads. 'Change will not happen at the local level; we need senior-level political support to scale up these projects, similar to what occurred in Karnataka.'
Ultimately, the goal should be to normalise pedestrian infrastructure and regard it as a fundamental civic responsibility that the administration must deliver in every town and city. 'Creating a walkable environment is not something civic bodies should seek praise for,' said Shekhar Singh. 'Our aspiration should be to make this process as routine as constructing a bitumen road, that is to create a standard template which becomes a rule for every engineer to follow.'

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India Today
32 minutes ago
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Shouldn't we now debate whether these terms still reflect the true ethos of the nation?'Some political analysts believe socialism was inserted to back Indira's efforts to cement her approval among the masses on the basis of a socialist and pro-poor image, with slogans such as 'garibi hatao' (eradicate poverty). Her government at the time of the Emergency apparently inserted the word in the Preamble of the Constitution to underline that socialism was a goal and philosophy of the Indian state. The Sangh has since nurtured the grouse that Indira's socialism was closer to what was practised in the former Soviet Union or China of the time, and had envisaged the nationalisation of all of India's means of production. This is completely in opposition to the Sangh's ideas and economic didn't make an offhand remark. In the Sangh Parivar, few public interventions are accidental. The occasion—an Emergency remembrance event—was steeped in ideological symbolism. 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It's worth revisiting in today's context.'In Bhopal, Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan argued: 'India has always been secular in spirit—these labels were unnecessary. Our civilisational culture is far more inclusive than these terms can capture.'advertisementBut the government offered no response. No constitutional amendment was proposed. No debate will be initiated in Parliament. The BJP's strategic instinct was restraint. The RSS had floated the idea. The BJP made no move to act on isn't new. The present-day BJP has moved beyond several of the socialist leaders to expand into different geographies and demographies. This helped rid the party some of its untouchability while making it skillful in alliances with socialist parties. The collapse of the Janata Dal meant several of its constituents joining the BJP over the years, aiding the party's expansion in Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana and Bihar, and a bounce-back in Uttar BJP's relationship with the word 'socialism' has always been fraught. When the party was formed in April 1980 in Delhi, it was born from the wreckage of the Janata experiment. Its leaders—Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Nanaji Deshmukh—chose to name it the Bharatiya Janata Party, not the revived Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Seeking to appeal to a broader middle-class constituency and mindful of India's post-Emergency mood, they adopted 'Gandhian Socialism' as the party's guiding philosophy. Jayaprakash Narayan's portrait was placed beside those of Jana Sangh founders Deendayal Upadhyaya and Syama Prasad the term never sat easy. Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia and many RSS swayamsevaks were openly critical. For them, even Gandhian Socialism smacked of ideological compromise. In the RSS's intellectual tradition, 'socialism' was seen as a Western import, inimical to India's civilisational values of dharma, decentralization and family-centric BJP's 1984 electoral disaster—just two Lok Sabha seats—prompted a rethink. Gandhian Socialism was dropped from party literature. The BJP began to articulate its vision through the lens of 'Integral Humanism' and 'Anatodayaya', the philosophical framework propounded by Upadhyaya in the Sangh pracharak, Dattopant Thengadi, deepened this narrative. In his book Third Way, he laid out a sweeping rejection of both capitalism and socialism, arguing for a uniquely Indian path grounded in spiritual economics and self-reliant communities. This language suited the Sangh: it was civilisational, not class-based; moral, not Minister Narendra Modi's rise to power enabled the BJP to recast this discourse in a modern, managerial idiom. The phrase 'Garib Kalyan' replaced the older frameworks of socialism. Massive welfare schemes, such as Ujjwala, Ayushman Bharat and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, were implemented using digital governance tools. Benefits were targeted via the 'JAM' trinity: Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar authentication and Mobile connectivity. Redistribution took place, but it was framed not as class war but empowerment. Modi's model promised dignity through genius of this political project was in divorcing the mechanics of redistribution from the vocabulary of socialism. 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas' became a rallying cry that carried moral force without ideological baggage. It reached Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs and the aspirational middle classes simultaneously, without needing to cite Jawaharlal Nehru or Karl the BJP's revision, socialism doesn't talk of 'class struggle', as done by the Marxists. That stands the party out in the present-day debate on the caste census. Caste-focused parties, such as the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party, and now even the Congress, talk of 'jiski jitni aabadi utna haq' (quota rights as per population) while demanding reservation and a caste census. On the other hand, the BJP is propounding taking everyone along—in effect, rendering socialism obsolete in both policy and is why the RSS is now asking the obvious question: if the BJP has long abandoned socialism in practice, why preserve its ghost in the Preamble? Why let a word inserted during a constitutional 'dark age' remain enshrined in the foundational text of the Indian republic? From the Sangh's point of view, this isn't just a semantic matter. It's about reclaiming the Constitution from what it sees as ideological distortions imposed during a time of political for the BJP, the calculus is different. Deleting 'socialist' or 'secular' from the Preamble would require a constitutional amendment—one that could provoke fierce opposition and judicial scrutiny. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the 'basic structure' doctrine and often relied on the Preamble's socialist character to buttress rulings on affirmative action, labour rights and environmental protection. Any attempt to alter that language could ignite a legal also the political cost. For many voters—especially the rural poor, SC/ST communities and OBCs—the idea of socialism is not about Marxist theory but government support: subsidies, pensions, quotas, welfare. These voters may trust Modi more than the Congress but still expect the State to deliver economic justice. Striking out 'socialist' from the Constitution could alarm these segments just as the BJP tries to deepen its social base beyond the urban middle class and upper the BJP's strategic silence. Let the RSS test the waters. Let sympathetic ministers issue cryptic nods. But don't commit. Don't legislate. Don't provoke the conversation has begun. Hosabale's words may not become policy in this Parliament or even the next. But they represent an ideological challenge to the Nehruvian consensus, still embedded in the constitutional framework. And in the world of the Sangh Parivar, such challenges rarely fade away. They wait and return. Sometimes, they even rewrite the script of the to India Today Magazine- EndsTune InMust Watch


News18
an hour ago
- News18
'Volunteers Bridging Divides': RSS Reports 'Positive Progress' In Manipur Conflict Zones
Last Updated: Although notable positive developments have been observed in Manipur, the RSS, at a press conference today, noted that achieving complete normalcy will require more time. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders Sunil Ambekar and Anil Agarwal held a joint press conference on Monday, touching upon various significant issues. The RSS said that with their workers on ground in Manipur, positive developments were taking place in the state. 'RSS volunteers are actively working to restore peace and foster dialogue among the Meitei and other communities affected by the conflict," said Ambekar, RSS's Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh. Although notable positive developments have been observed, the leaders noted that achieving complete normalcy will require more time. The RSS is implementing inclusive outreach initiatives aimed at engaging diverse sections of society. People from border areas have actively participated in these programmes, reflecting growing trust and a widening social connection, the two RSS pracharaks said. On the topic of the socialist and secular words in the Constitution, the RSS recalled the Emergency period as a time of severe political repression and constitutional violations. 'Democratic values were suspended, and amendments were made without a genuine public mandate," Ambekar said. The leaders urged future generations to study this dark chapter to understand the fragility of democracy when 'power is unchecked". Language Row And Attacks By Congress Regarding the language row, Sunil Ambekar stated that the RSS has always considered all Indian languages as national languages. He asserted that people should speak the language prevalent in their region, and primary education should be imparted in that language. Discussing attacks from the Congress, the leaders mentioned that attempts to impose a ban on the RSS were met with public outrage or legal pressure, which led to the rollback, as the ban lacked legitimacy from the outset. Under the Panch Parivartan framework, the RSS aims for comprehensive national transformation focusing on five key areas: advancing economic self-reliance, promoting individual well-being, nurturing values-based living, strengthening social welfare, and ensuring inclusive economic growth. The core focus of the RSS Centenary Year is to expand its outreach on a massive scale, ensuring a connection with every stratum of society and fostering inclusivity and national integration. On intellectual engagement at the district level, the RSS plans to hold meetings in all 924 Sangh-structured districts involving intellectuals and esteemed personalities. These interactions aim to deepen ideological dialogue and strengthen the organisation's connection with thought leaders across the country. As part of its mass outreach, the RSS will organise Hindu Sammelans in every mandal and basti, covering 58,000 mandals and 44,000 bastis. In total, over one lakh Hindu Sammelans will be held nationwide to strengthen grassroots connections. Last year, during May and June, the RSS conducted over 100 Sangh Prashikshan Vargs (training camps), with 75 of them specifically for participants below 40 years of age. A total of 17,609 volunteers, including those at the Nagpur headquarters, participated in these camps. Additionally, 8,813 students took part in Sangh Shiksha Vargs, showcasing strong youth engagement. For the 40–60 age group, 4,270 volunteers were trained, highlighting inter-generational involvement in the organisation's ideological and practical training.