Outside Infosys in Gachibowli is a wide footpath, a cycle track and a skywalk. Few footpaths in Hyderabad look like this.
Hyderabad: Outside the Gachibowli stretch that houses Infosys, TCS, Indian School of Business (ISB) and Wipro, the footpath is wide enough for three people to walk side by side. It is paved in granite. Next to it is a cycle track and a skywalk runs overhead. On a weekday afternoon, people were actually walking on it. That is more than can be said for most footpaths in the rest of Hyderabad.
In most other parts of the city, footpaths are broken, narrow, dirty or taken over by shops and vehicles. Many areas have no footpaths at all and people are left to walk on the road.
A walk through the western IT corridor, from Durgam Cheruvu through Hitech City, Raidurg, Kondapur and Gachibowli to the Financial District and Nanakramguda, shows this side of town doing much better. Several stretches have footpaths that are wide, clean and unbroken. But the same drive also shows patches as bad as anywhere else in the city, with footpaths dug up, parked over or missing altogether.
This matters, because in June this year, the Supreme Court said that walking on a safe footpath is a fundamental right under Articles 19(1)(d) and 21.
The reason is not hard to understand. This area has the Indian offices of big global companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Large companies usually build and look after the footpaths outside their gates. The Financial District side, which has the best footpaths in the city that can match international standards, was planned from scratch with wide roads from the start. Being a new area gave it the room to do so.
Hitech City came up in the late 1990s and the rest grew over the next 20 years, mostly on open land. So in many places, roads were planned before the buildings came up. Older parts of Hyderabad grew the other way round. It is now the area that is highlighted as the jewel of the city, the golden goose that brings in immense money and investment.
But money alone does not explain it. Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills are rich areas and still lack proper footpaths. What makes the IT corridor different is who owns the buildings and who the city wants to impress.
The Financial District has the best footpaths on the route. They are wide, clean and run without a break, so people can walk from one office to the next without stepping onto the road. The stretch outside IKEA is also good.
Around Shilparamam, the arts and crafts village in Madhapur, the footpaths are in good shape too. From the Shilpakala Vedika side, a clearly marked footpath runs past Shilparamam’s painted compound wall and continues almost all the way to the Google office at the end of the road. People were walking on it, not on the road.
At the other end of that road, towards Cyber Towers and the Nationa Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) campus, the footpath is also good. The Hitech City Metro station nearby helps, because people walk to and from it all day.
This is what much of the rest of Hyderabad is still waiting for.
With office after office along it, the road past Mindspace is one of the busiest in the corridor for people on foot. It is also one of the hardest to walk on. Road work has taken over the footpath in several places, pushing people onto the road.
At Raidurg Metro station, the footpath exists but the tiles are broken, the width is narrow and there are pipes and construction debris that make it difficult to navigate. Office-goers walk to the station in a single line on this narrow strip, a foot away from the traffic.
Rakesh Varma, 29, a software engineer who takes the Metro to work, told Siasat.com that the walk from Raidurg station is the hardest part of his commute, especially after 6 pm, when he has to keep stepping aside for passing vehicles. “I’m literally walking alongside speeding vehicles,” he said.
Further along the road, under the Metro line, the footpath has been dug into a trench of mud and broken rock. Cars are parked on whatever space is left. A little ahead, there is only a mud track, traffic cones, some warning tape and a pile of boulders. At neither place was there a safe, temporary path for people to use.
Raidurg and Hitech City are just one Metro stop apart. At one station, people have a footpath. At the other, they walk on the road.
Kondapur was once a village. Today it is one of the busiest areas in the west, packed with hospitals, apartments and shops.
Outside Apollo Spectra Hospitals on the Kondapur main road, the footpath has disappeared under parked cars. Under the flyover, autos line the edge of the road and two-wheelers are parked on the footpath in front of shops.
This is not the work of street vendors. Pedestrians say shops and showrooms are the bigger problem and that action against them has been on and off.
Madhavi Reddy, 54, who has lived in the area for years, told Siasat.com that showrooms use the pavement for parking, so she walks on the road when she goes to buy something on the main road. “Passing cars have brushed her arm twice and authorities have done little about the larger commercial establishments encroaching the space,” she said.
Further up, near Aura Hospitals in Raghavendra Colony, the shops go right up to the road. There is no footpath at all. On the same road further west, through Raja Rajeshwara Nagar towards Masjid Banda, there is only a dirt edge lined with concrete barriers and tin sheets.
Near the Botanical Garden, there is a decent tiled footpath to walk on. But parts of it are dirty, because people use it to urinate.
Along the University of Hyderabad, better known as Hyderabad Central University (HCU), there is no footpath at all. There is only a dirt strip beside the road, with young trees planted along it. On a dry day, people can walk on it. When it rains, it turns to mud. With a large student population, that can be a real problem.
Kabir, a student at HCU, told Siasat.com that hundreds of students walk out of the university gates every day with no proper footpath. “The dirt strip is dusty now,” he said, adding that it turns to slush in the monsoon, leaving students to choose between the mud and the main road.
Outside these few good stretches, on public land, outside small shops and near construction sites, there is a lot of room for improvement.
(This is part 6 in a six-part series focusing on Hyderabad’s footpaths and pedestrian infrastructure. Click to read part 4 and part 5)
This post was last modified on September 26, 2026 6:40 pm