Hyderabad, Sept. 25 -- Secunderabad was once built with wide, orderly roads - a legacy of its military-planned past. Walk through it today and that order is gone. Footpaths across the city's main roads and neighbourhoods have collapsed under neglect. Pedestrians are pushed off the kerb and onto the road, because footpaths here are treated as dumping grounds, parking spaces or free space for anyone to use.

Take the footpath outside the fenced compound on Entrenchment Road. On paper, it is a good one. Red and grey interlocking tiles, a painted kerb, tactile strips for the visually impaired. It runs for only a few metres before a tree trunk grows out of the middle of it, and a little later it disappears under a mound of construction rubble,...