Right of way: On the right to walk on demarcated footpaths

📌 Summary:

• Context: As part of its expansion of Article 21 since the 1970s, the Supreme Court (Justices P.S. Narasimha and Atul S. Chandurkar) declared the right to walk on demarcated footpaths a fundamental right, in a case seeking higher compensation for a five-year-old boy killed by a tanker lorry in Karnataka
• Core argument: A 'right to walk' is desirable, but without an enabling culture and state investment the constitutional nudge may achieve little
• Problem diagnosis: There is no national pedestrian-rights law; responsibility is split across municipal laws, town-planning statutes and street-design guidelines; most cities lack continuous, unobstructed footpaths, and existing ones are encroached by parking, vendors, utilities, debris and road-widening
• Causal chain — why rights-based laws have had mixed success in changing public culture: (1) The Street Vendors Act, 2014 (protecting vendors under Article 19(1)(g)) is weakly implemented as urban local bodies delayed surveys, town vending committees and vending-zone demarcation, allowing informal rent-seeking to persist (2) COTPA, 2003 curtailed public smoking through consistent social messaging and small, immediate fines — not 'restitutionary remedies' (3) Littering persists despite Swachh Bharat because the law stresses citizens' duty to segregate while the state neglects its duty to collect segregated waste
• Risk flagged: The state could misuse the judgment to 'cleanse' streets of informal commerce — gentrifying public spaces and criminalising the survival of the urban poor; the ruling may also clash with the 2014 Vendors Act
• Solution: The nudge will succeed only by moving state funds toward pedestrian infrastructure — building continuous, unobstructed footpaths

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 Polity — the expansive interpretation of Article 21; GS1/GS3 — urbanisation, street vending and urban governance.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• The right to walk on footpaths has been read into Article 21 (right to life)
• The Street Vendors Act, 2014 requires town vending committees and demarcated vending zones
• COTPA, 2003 — the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act

🔑 Key Term: Restitutionary remedy — a compensation-based judicial remedy awarded after harm has occurred, contrasted with preventive cultural or behavioural change.