A walk on the wild side

Crowded, narrowing and, in some places, missing altogether. Suparna Thombare and Divya Subramaniam report on how our footpaths are being driven into extinction

Kushroo Munshi loves his evening walks. Though there is bright sunlight, the leafy banyan trees planted along the pavement offer enough shade to the 63-year-old Five Gardens resident. “There are vehicles, but they don’t get in our way. Thanks to the pavements here, people can walk about and sit and chat with their friends,” he says.

This delightful picture painted by Munshi is however fast facing extinction in Mumbai’s scramble for space. It is the exception in a bustling city where the norm is the scene at Chembur’s Sahakar Junction, where senior citizen R Krishnan was knocked down by an auto rickshaw during his morning walk. Dealt severe head injuries and bruises, Krishnan had been walking on the road, because there was no space on the pavement.

Hawkers, car parks, building projects and poor planning are starving the city of crucial pavement space, turning the city into a living hell for pedestrians. “I have to walk on the road as the pavements are always full of cars and two-wheelers,” says Shikha Sen, 63, a resident of Bandra Reclamation, who ended up with a scraped knee because of a passing auto rickshaw. “Things get so bad that I can’t even walk to the grocery store.”

As visions of turning Mumbai into Shanghai all look upward at skyscrapers and flyovers, the pavements beneath us have been completely ignored. The McKinsey report, Vision Mumbai, which outlines ways to make Mumbai a world-class city, does not even mention pedestrians.

Mumbai’s pavements are not merely a space for pedestrians to walk on; they enrich the life of the surrounding community. The pavement booksellers, who have been selling second-hand books for decades, are a familiar and comforting sight for the residents of King’s Circle. Ruia College students have special memories too, formed on the ‘katta’ (the long low wall outside Matunga Gymkhana) and the pavement opposite their college. “My father spent all his college years hanging out on the sidewalks here,” laughs Rupa Vishwanathan, a student of Ruia College. “This isn’t just a pavement for us.”

While inhabitants of Matunga and Five Gardens are lucky to still have the luxury of pavements, Bandra’s Hill Road is not as blessed. Fed up with the stress he endures every time he walks down the road, resident Manav Khedkar says, “Public bodies need to think like a pedestrian to find a solution.”

Too many of Mumbai’s pavements are too narrow, making pedestrianism almost impossible. KV Krishna Rao of the Standing Technical Advisory Committee, who has been appointed by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for advice on road construction, designing, maintenance and development, says the minimum and average size for a pavement in the city is 1.5m and 2m, respectively. “But this needs to be altered according to pedestrian volume which is often neglected.”

The few areas that still have wide pavements are finding them gradually being turned into parking lots. “Pavements in the city are being made for cars not pedestrians,” says Prasad Shetty, executive-member, Collective Research Initiatives Trust, a Mumbai-based research organisation. “Rather than acting as a space for pedestrians, they are being used as a means to keep people and other things off the roads.”

“Another big problem is shabby repair work. The BMC is supposed to follow certain guidelines while doing repair work,” says Bhaskar Prabhu, an activist who has also filed numerous RTI (right to information) applications about the conditions of roads.

So what is it that hapless pedestrians and residents can do to save pavements from being eaten up by the city? GR Vohra, secretary of the Flank Road Citizens Forum in Matunga, says constant pressure on the authorities is the key. “Relentless vigilance by residents is the reason the Five Gardens area still has pavements,” he says. Neera Punj of CitiSpace, an NGO fighting for the retention of spaces for pedestrians in the city, says, “It’s because of citizens’ apathy that encroachments have become such a problem.” Adds activist Bhaskar Prabhu, “Citizens should network with the Citizen's Road Committee, who can then check on the state of the pavements and question the authorities.”

The authorities too seem to recognise the problem and the need for solutions. Rao says that for Mumbai to become a truly liveable city, it needs good pavements. “The Central government has said that all future funding for road projects will depend on how pedestrian-friendly they are, so MCGM’s future plans will have to consider the rights of pedestrians,” he says.

Municipal commissioner Johny Joseph says, “We have allotted Rs25.9 crore this year for the construction and improvement of footpaths in Greater Mumbai.” According to additional commissioner Shrikant Singh, the BMC is trying to map storm-water drains, pipelines and utility lines so that pavements do not lie dug up indefinitely.

But until these plans fall into place, it appears that pedestrians in the city just have to steel themselves for a walk on the wild side.