Every winter, Delhi and dozens of other Indian cities disappear under a toxic blanket of smog. The arguments are predictable: stubble burning, factory emissions, construction sites, vehicle exhaust. Yet we ignore one of the simplest solutions: walkable cities.

Walking is already how most Indians move through cities. Studies consistently show that up to 60% of daily urban trips are made on foot, especially by members of low-income households who cannot afford cars or even public transport. For millions of Indians, walking is an economic compulsion.

However, in 2023 alone, 35,221 pedestrians were killed on Indian roads – 20.4% of all road fatalities that year, according to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Between 2019 and 2023, nearly 1.5 lakh pedestrians died as a result of vehicle crashes, about one in every five road deaths in that period, a Supreme Court panel audit estimated.

These accidents occurred because India’s infrastructure does not value pedestrians.

Most Indians walk. But Indian cities are built for cars.

Across urban and semi-urban India, footpaths are either missing or unusable. Where they exist, they are broken, narrowed by shop extensions, encroached upon by vendors, blocked by electric poles, billboards, and open drains or simply taken over by parked vehicles.

Pedestrians are routinely forced into fast-moving traffic....

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