A family rides a cycle rickshaw at a busy intersection in east New Delhi
There are few enforced laws governing India's anarchic roads but there is a clear hierarchy, towards the bottom of which are men like 41-year-old Sushil Kumar who cycles to work each day.
Trucks and buses, often driven with arrogance bordering on hostility, top the pyramid, followed by cars and auto-rickshaws. Cyclists are above the widely ignored pedestrian, but appear to rank below cows.
The transport of choice for the poor - 45 percent of households have a bike - has long been overlooked and now faces a struggle to survive in one city, Kolkata, after being banned from central roads.
While Kolkata has been widely condemned for restricting millions of people and their livelihoods, the cyclist faces a daily Darwinian battle for space on roads across the country.
Charles Correa, India's most famous modern architect and planning expert, says the the car-driving ruling class is indifferent to and ignorant of the plight of the urban biker.
"Nobody in power even knows how to cycle, they'd fall right off," Correa scoffed in an interview by telephone from his office in Mumbai.
"Decisions are made for the city by people who use cars," he explains, unlike in developed countries where "sufficiently important people" use public transport or bikes.
"That hasn't happened in India. It's like the British Raj, the sahib (boss) should never be seen waiting for the bus," Correa told AFP.
A long ride Sushil Kumar leaves his home at 6:00am every morning for his job in the telecoms ministry where he is paid 5,500 rupees a month by a private contractor - less than the minimum wage.
His route of 15 miles takes him from his home in the tough Delhi suburb of Ghaziabad, past camel-pulled carts and potholes, and beyond rows of mushrooming apartment blocks.
It takes an hour and half in the morning to finally reach the central leafy boulevards of New Delhi and often two hours to return. He travels about 1,000 kilometres each month.
"I've been knocked off but luckily the car stopped in time," the 41-year-old father of four told AFP, adding that he messages his anxious wife each day when he arrives at work.
"It's very dangerous... There is the metro (as an alternative), but it's 60 rupees a day and I can't afford it," he says.
His bike is of typical Indian style - a battered black with rugged old-fashioned geometry, single-geared and without reflectors or lights.
While he has avoided serious injury - "I have to ride defensively," he says - accidents are commonplace, even for those taking the necessary precautions.
Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain underwent surgery for serious facial injuries after being catapulted from her bike in October by a car which hit her from behind and sped off.
In June, 51-year-old national cycling coach Ruma Chatterjee was killed while out training on an expressway on the outskirts of New Delhi. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel.
"This hierarchy on the road is so well established in India," Anil Shukla, one of Delhi's most senior traffic policemen, who lamented the lack of cycle paths and space for bikers.
"The cyclist is a very lowly creature. Even among the cars, the SUV is the best," he told AFP at an event to distribute reflective stickers to bikers.
About 70-80 cyclists are killed each year in Delhi, he says.
Cities designed for carsAnumita Roychowdhury, a colleague of Narain's from the Centre for Science and Environment, says India is driving out cyclists even as many cities in the West are encouraging them.
"If you look at how most people travel, they are either using public transport or they are cycling or walking," she told AFP. "But you are not designing the city for the majority."
Investments in transport infrastructure in most Indian cities are overwhelmingly targeted at road widening or expensive underground metro systems like Delhi's which opened in 2002.
But there are an estimated 12 million bicycles sold each year in India against only 1.89 million car sales, according to industry figures.
The last census in 2011 showed that 45 percent of Indian households own a bicycle, 21 percent have a motorbike or scooter and only 5.0 percent have four-wheeled transport.