M J Anthony: A tough call

OUT OF COURT

There are enough orders. The question is how many of them can be implemented

These are times when we wish we were born with ear lids.

Noise pollution was earlier confined to a few industrial areas. Now the main "ear contaminators", such as firecrackers, loudspeakers, aeroplanes and pop singers have spread everywhere in the urban areas, according to the Supreme Court.

The government has failed to update the laws and enforce the existing ones. Therefore, some compulsively optimistic citizens moved the Supreme Court asking it to direct the government to enforce the environmental laws.

After seven years of deliberation, the court delivered a bulky judgement last week in the case, appropriately titled "In the matter of noise pollution". It passed five pages of directions to the authorities to control the manufacture and use of firecrackers, horns and loudspeakers. However, the question remains one of how many of the directions can be implemented.

Some directions: No one shall beat a drum or tom-tom or blow a trumpet or beat or sound any instrument or use any sound amplifier between 10 pm and 6 am, except in emergencies. No vehicular horn should be allowed during the same period in residential areas except in exceptional circumstances. The states shall make provision for seizure and confiscation of loudspeakers, amplifiers and such other equipment that exceed the permissible decibel level.

It is not that the laws were scanty. The Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Factories Act, the Motor Vehicles Act and the law of torts were all there for decades.

In recent times, rules were passed specifically to deal with noise pollution under the Motor Vehicles Act and the environment laws. However, there has been no political will to implement them. Will the situation change after the Supreme Court orders, is the doubt raised by cynics.

They point out the fate of some earlier orders of wide sweep. The Kerala high court prohibited bandhs in a public interest case. The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Left unions against the ban. The name of the direct action was then changed to hartal, and again it was forbidden by the courts. However, there is not a month when there is no call for such strikes against the citizens. The authorities have clearly failed to enforce the judicial orders.

Another monumental failure to enforce court orders is in the matter of smoking. The Supreme Court and some high courts banned smoking in public a few years ago. However, to the delight of the tobacco industry, the consumption has not dropped. Similar is the case with the orders restricting the sale and use of pan masala.

The Punjab and Haryana High Courts had prohibited spitting in public places some time ago. But one would take a window seat on a public vehicle only at the risk of being sprayed by pan spittle.

The Supreme Court has been trying to streamline the public food distribution system for a few years, following reports of starvation deaths in the land where FCI godowns are overflowing with foodgrains, a lot of them rotting. The court has passed a number of orders. Last Friday, it was found that in the national capital there were at least three times more people on the ration cards than the city's population. No prizes for guessing the number of bogus ration cards in, say, the land of fodder scam.

In Almitra Patel vs Union of India, another running case highlighting the environmental degradation of urban areas, the Supreme Court had passed several well-meaning orders.

Some of them: Streets and public premises shall be surface-cleaned on a daily basis, including Sundays and public holidays; fine should be imposed on those who litter the streets with plastic or paper; publish the names of sanitary supervisors responsible for cleaning the city and appoint magistrates for each ward in every city to ensure compliance of the municipal rules. Few of these directions are obeyed "" or remembered.

Though the list of such discounted orders is long, it must be conceded that revolutionary changes have been brought about by the Supreme Court in several fields. It introduced CNG fuel for public transport vehicles in Delhi, despite stiff opposition from the government and the petroleum lobby. Mining of forests has been largely controlled as well as deforestation.

Why there is substantial compliance with some orders while some are largely ignored is a matter of debate. When the court tried to change social habits with a swing of the judicial pen, as in the case of smoking and pan-chewing, the results have been indifferent. But when it continuously prodded the authorities to follow orders and painstakingly monitored their compliance, as in the case of CNG and mining, the results have been better.