Children are vulnerable. And not merely to rash-driving, air pollution, bad roads and parental pressure. The sudden realization of their susceptibility to the evil of car-pools, following the recent death of a schoolboy, should bring with it an understanding of how the conspiracy of silence among adults, their parents included, endanger children’s lives. A substantial number of children travel to school in ramshackle cars. They are mostly driven by little-trained youngsters who are expected to cope with the demands of the morning traffic on their nerves and reflexes. Parents are not completely unaware of the dangers, nor are the school authorities, many of whom no longer wish to take on the responsibility of maintaining a fleet of school buses for ferrying students. What the school may not know, but can guess, is the enormous distances some of the children need to ply regularly, and which multiply the dangers. There have been attempts on the part of the judiciary, particularly in places like Delhi, to limit the distance commuted between the home and the school. But till now, there has been no attempt by the government or by schools in West Bengal to implement such a regulation. This is, in fact, all the better for parents. They would find their right of choice severely compromised if they were forced to send their children to little-known neighbourhood schools that often do not have English as their medium of instruction.

The state department presiding over this sea of chaos pleads helplessness in the face of the combined might of commercial opportunism and the indifference of those who are supposed to look after the children’s interests. The public vehicles department — whose liberal grant of driving licences is singularly responsible for the deteriorating standards of driving on the city roads — has started impounding pool cars to make sure that contract carriage rules are complied with. But its much-delayed and arbitrary action is bound to have as little impact on the situation as the state transport department’s attempts to set up more driving schools as an answer to the problem of errant driving. Life has to be more valued for the killings to stop on the road. Parents could get this sense across to schools by insisting on their children’s right to safe travel, preferably in school buses. Schools, by granting children this right, can show that they are also concerned more about children’s lives than their grades.