In June 2026, the Supreme Court declared walking on demarcated footpaths a fundamental right under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution. Deciding an appeal over the death of a child run over by a tanker on his walk to school, the bench held that pedestrian movement takes priority over motorised vehicles. The judgment placed an enforceable duty on municipal authorities and panchayats to build and maintain footpaths along every road where one exists.
The toll. Pedestrians are the second most vulnerable category of road users in India after riders of two-wheelers. Annual reports from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways record that 32,825 pedestrians died in 2022, 35,203 in 2023, and 36,526 in 2024; the reports put pedestrians at more than a fifth of all crash fatalities in 2023 (20.4%) and 2024 (20.6%). Two-wheelers, cars, taxis, and vans caused more than half of those deaths in 2024, while IIT Delhi researchers found that government statistics substantially undercount pedestrian fatalities.
The footpath. Walking accounts for a large share of urban travel, yet footpaths across Indian cities remain broken, blocked, or missing. A BBC report citing census-based estimates notes that around 45 million people walk to work daily, and an IIT Delhi analysis of the 2011 census found that 67.6% of commuting urban women workers walked to their jobs, compared with 28.3% of men. Walkways are often obstructed by parked vehicles and shops. An ITDP study published in 2024 found that building 100 kilometres of footpaths in Chennai prompted between 9% and 29% of surveyed walkers in 2019 to shift away from motorized transport, even while poor surfaces and open manholes on the new paths still caused injuries.
Walking as pilgrimage. Walking is an act of devotion on pilgrimage routes across the country, where millions travel on foot each year. Devotees trek barefoot for nearly 50 kilometres over stones and thorns from Erumeli to Sabarimala, climb stone footpaths to Tirumala where the temple board carries luggage free to the top, provides a token to those who come on foot, and runs biometric counters on the paths enabling free darshan, accommodation and food, or walk up to 50 days in the wari to Pandharpur. Thousands join processions to circumambulate Navadwip, while at Govardhan, according to a petitioner cited in the NGT proceedings, eight to ten million pilgrims visit the parikrama every month and the National Green Tribunal accepted its committee’s recommendations to remove encroachments on the parikrama path and build a Radhakund bypass. On the roads to Velankanni, however, pilgrims walking along arterial highways often take to the carriageway beside fast traffic, suffering fatal accidents every year.
Walking as practice. Walking has long shaped personal discipline, bodily health, and political mobilization in India. The Buddhist Cankama Sutta records walking meditation for enduring physical exertion and steadying concentration, while Mahatma Gandhi treated walking as the prince of exercises, maintaining that a healthy person should easily walk ten to twelve miles a day. In the freedom struggle, Gandhi turned long marches into political weapons during the 1930 Salt March, walked barefoot between villages during communal violence in Noakhali, and in his final days in Delhi wanted Suhrawardy to be able to walk the city’s streets. Vinoba Bhave continued this tradition during the Bhoodan movement, walking from village to village to collect land donations for the landless and insisting that thought clarifies and matures on foot.॥
New in revision 2: adds walking as pilgrimage: the forest path to Sabarimala, the footpaths up to Tirumala, the walk to Velankanni and the Govardhan parikrama, with This Indian Life's reading of the 2024 yearbook.
