Footpaths - are they for pedestrians or for various other purposes

Invariably in Mumbai you will find that footpaths are not used by pedestrians at all. The reason for this is that almost all footpaths - apart from the South Mumbai area, are used either by hawkers or have been captured by the land mafia who have sold off this land to migrants which now house hutment dwellers. In many areas the power companies have given power connections so that these people do not steal power. The hawkers refuse to go to designated hawking zones as they have the support of wrong thinking politicians. We need to gather the will power to take decisions which are right for the public at large and not for a small group of people.

The other day a friend and I were driving down Vakola area in Santcruz East, when the left rear view mirror of the car touched a lady who was walking on the road. She stopped the car and ranted in hindi, something to the effect that - "there is no place to walk on the road, and you are driving a car!!" In this area not only are the footpaths full of hawkers but even two lanes of the roads have been illegally occupied. No wonder accidents happen - and when they do happen it is always the fault of the vehicle driver.

Tulsipipe Road was cleared of hutments last year and nice clean footpaths have been built. The pedestrians in this area are so used to walking on the roads, that in spite of there being pretty decent footpaths you find people walking on the roads, impeding traffic and posing a risk for themselves and for vehicle drivers. I am sure we can have a law for jay-walking and fine people caught indulging in this practice, and frequent defaulters could be put behind bars.

We also have cases where people sleep at night - not only on footpaths, but also on roads and road dividers. Once whilst on the way to the airport I had a close shave! I almost ran over a human leg which had slipped from the road divider where this individual was sleeping. The street lighting in certain areas is non existent or poor with visibility coming from the headlight of the car. At that point the visibility was bad and only a last minute swerve ensured that I did not run over this person's leg. From that day on, if I have to travel at night, I never drive close to the road divider!!

Mr. Salman Khan is still fighting a case of driving over pedestrians sleeping on the footpath. I hold no brief for Mr. Khan - but the question is should people be sleeping on the roads, footpaths, road dividers? In legal parlance is there not something called contributory negligence wherein the affected party has to bear the blame for contributing to the event by behaving in a rash and negligent manner?