Why Supreme Court order can't fix India's footpaths

The

Supreme Court

’s recognition of the right to walk on demarcated footpaths as a fundamental right has given India’s pedestrian crisis a rare moment of national attention. But for Mumbai-based environmentalist and urban activist Rishi Aggarwal, who has spent years arguing that Indian cities must be designed for walkers before cars, the judgement is nowhere close to a solution.
Aggarwal is the founder of Walking Project, a citizens’ initiative that has worked to push walkability into the centre of Mumbai’s urban conversation. Its work has focused on a deceptively simple question: why does a city where millions walk every day still treat the pedestrian as an afterthought? The answer, Aggarwal argues, lies not in the absence of rules, but in the failure of local institutions and citizens to enforce them.