West Bengal’s important people have done their bit for global warming. All their worries about air pollution in Calcutta — the deadliest in India — came to a head on World Environment Day. The chief minister has announced — at a commemorative seminar organized, among others, by the state pollution control board — that he is “planning” to make it mandatory for the city’s 30,000-odd auto-rickshaws to be run on LPG. A whole series of other “plans” have been thought up to make this conversion possible. Some involve the courts, for proper legal guidelines on checking auto emission and ‘phasing out’ old vehicles; some involve the Centre, to ensure adequate supplies of LPG. All are plans, prospects, thoughts. Nothing has been done in actual terms to implement any of this. And there is scope, at every level, to pass the buck, to the courts or Centre, if none of it works out. There is nothing new in any of this, nothing beyond Environment-Day tokenism.

The real problem with auto emission in general, and with auto-rickshaws in particular, is hopelessly political. It is a criminal mix of inefficiency, unionism, corruption and sheer lack of will. It has always been so, and nothing that might happen, or not happen, at the G-8 summit is likely to make any difference at all in West Bengal, to its chief minister, pollution control board or transport department. The stakes are too high. They involve the criminal-political nexus around spurious, polluting fuel and the hold of trade unions on the political leadership, possibly at the highest levels of party and government. Unless this is confronted, admitted and addressed with absolute honesty and ruthlessness, nothing substantial is going to be achieved in terms of air pollution in the state. The rest is ultimately meaningless and entirely insincere waffle. The problem with this waffle is that it maims and kills. But important people can get away with being a party to that.