Calcutta is probably the noisiest city in India. It has recently given up on trying to improve the quality of air that its citizens inhale. So, if saving the lungs has been declared more or less a lost cause (it is too much trouble), then perhaps it is time to have a bit of a public debate on auditory well-being. It was the Centre that provided this city with a way out of the rigours of Bharat II. It is now the Centre again that is about to empower the police to a much greater extent in punishing the makers of illegal din. Once the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules of 2000 are amended, the police will be able to fine, book and even arrest offenders. So, empowering the police and simplifying prosecution seem to be the answer. Such faith in the police’s awareness of pollution is perhaps a little naïve. After all, the police in Calcutta will have to take a very large portion of the blame for failing to enforce air-pollution norms. There is no reason to assume that they are going to be any more active when it comes to controlling noise. The national noise pollution regulations were apparently pioneered by West Bengal. So was the initial Bharat II “roadmap”, about half a decade ago. The green bench in the state must be lauded for persisting with its environmental activism in the face of an equally persistent inaction on the part of the government, municipality and police in implementing its rulings. The Pollution Control Board in West Bengal is an expert in “monitoring” sound levels and in drawing and interpreting noise-graphs. A great deal more than that has to be done to implement the new noise regulations.

As with any kind of behaviour change, the task in hand is nothing less than a civilizing process. It is not simply a question of how certain neighbourhoods behave during Kali puja or Diwali. It is ultimately a question of how citizens respect one another’s bodies, minds and spaces, and of how the state understands and intervenes in these civic relations. It is difficult to imagine the police teaching adults to be considerate to one another. To be fair to them, this is not really their job. A modern Indian city gives its inhabitants many opportunities for flaunting their lack of manners. Apart from television, radios and stereo systems, there are mobile phones, which have brought into being a whole new order of inconsiderate behaviour that is bad for the ears and nerves. Besides, cars reverse to shrill tunes and politicians love to hear themselves screaming. So the police will have to work very hard to make Calcutta a quieter city.