In the morning, when he was killed, a five-year-old boy was walking to school with his father. A tanker came from behind and crushed him. There was no footpath. There was no pedestrian crossing.

These two absences, ordinary and unremarkable in the landscape of Indian cities, cost a child his life. It is this tragedy that compelled the Supreme Court of India, in Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz v. P. Ayyappan (2026 INSC 647), to do what decades of urban neglect had made necessary. It formally declares the right to walk on demarcated footpaths a fundamental right under the Constitution...