In Calcutta, change is always a battle between new kinds of consciousness and existing forms of chaos. New ways of being aware of the environment, especially various types of pollution, and of conserving heritage are emerging erratically in the city. People are generally more worried about the air they breathe or the water they drink. But older forms of stoicism regarding slow death by poisoned air or water are proving to be more resilient than one would have imagined. This public inertia is, of course, most convenient for the government, for which carbon monoxide and arsenic are much less lethal than the loss of votes. In this context, the Calcutta high court’s recent concern for the Victoria Memorial is moving. The court wants the state government to move the bus terminus from Esplanade to a distant location within six months. The transport minister, who sees the point of the order, has said that the deadline set by the court would be impossible to meet.

It is the persistence of the court, supported by individuals and organizations from civil society, that succeeded in rescuing the Maidan from the city’s favourite fairs, particularly the one involving books. Although the question of the book fair’s venue is still far from settled, the court had persisted with the matter in spite of having been most unceremoniously disobeyed and ignored in its stand against environmental pollution. The story of the state government’s attitude to air pollution continues to be one of the most shocking instances of corruption and callousness in the history of Bengal’s governance. But the government’s continual and criminal disregard for the physical well-being of human beings seems not to have deterred the court from trying to make the government feel for the preservation of historic marble. For several years, an alternative fairground has been in the process of being built for the relocation of the book fair and other such carnivals from the Maidan. To invoke a deadline for such a project has become something of an absurdity. Now there is another environmental deadline to meet: the construction and relocation of the city’s main bus terminus. And that too for the sake of a building. The effectiveness of judicial activism in forcing an inert government into civic action has always been a matter for debate. It remains to be seen whether this latest instance reinforces the sceptical position in that debate.