Following mid-day’s reports about the encroachment of vehicles and vendors on footpaths, the Mumbai police’s traffic division has launched a full-scale campaign to penalise all such offenders.

The sheer scale of the response to this problem showed just how widespread and grave this is. Our footpaths have for very many years been unwalkable in many parts. The current big bugbear is footpath parking. The police claims they have taken action with a number of fines, etc. Yet, given the paucity of space and vehicles, especially two-wheelers in the city, this is a problem that is not going to go away easily. The fines need to be stringent enough to bite so that they act as both, current example and future deterrent.