It’s that time of the year when concern for environment reaches peak, only to ebb slowly but surely as days and months progress, until the arrival of next year. To the credit of government and other related agencies, the flavor of concern changes each year, which is good, because otherwise the whole thing becomes very monotonous.
This year the focus is on 3-wheeler autos, the uncrowned king of traffic nuisance in the city. That the autos are controlled by trade unions rather than by the traffic authorities is an open secret. Which means they are a law unto themselves, and just don’t care or bother about anything other than their own selfish interests.
Okay we know how ruthless and unruly they are on city roads when they ply. But do we know how they are poisoning the air day in day out by using a polluting fuel?
The fuel most petrol-driven autos use is a mix of petrol stolen from different vehicles, naptha and kerosene. Obviously this is not a lab-tested standard product, and therefore the amount of pollution it creates is monumental to say the least.
What is unfortunate is that the authorities turn a blind eye to this blatant creation of pollution. The common refrain among powerful auto unionists would perhaps be that the poor auto operators are not able to afford the costly petrol for their vehicles.
Which otherwise means that for the sake of ‘poor’ auto operators there should be no qualms in polluting the air that millions of people breathe. This strange dichotomy perhaps exists only in this city of all places.
In this year’s World Environment Day ‘celebration’ in the city the government’s pledge is to make it mandatory for the autos to convert to LPG as fuel.
The intention is indeed laudable, but let’s take it with a grain of salt. For, at the moment it is just a declaration made in course of the ‘celebration’. Whether it actually happens on ground, and if so when, is something no one knows.
Given the fact that they are hapless as ever, for millions of people who take to roads everyday, the environment minister’s noble declaration of making autos LPG-driven is just that, a declaration in thin air, occasioned by World Environment Day celebrations.
[Collated from similar topic in June 6 ABP]
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