Worse Noise Pollution

We have had occasions in the past to talk about the noise pollution in Guwahati. It has become necessary to revert to the subject because instead of any improvement in the situation it seems to have gone from bad to worse. It has somehow become a fashion for car users to have noise-making gadgets attached to their cars which produce the most unbearable cacophonous sounds when the car is reversed. What is worse is the volume at which these sounds are generated. Whenever such a car is reversed, there is perceptible agony in all the neighbouring households. What makes these noise-producing attachments major irritants is that the unwholesome sounds get repeated several times during the day. And yet the bottom line is that these attachments are totally unnecessary for safer driving. We know of many people who have done 40 or 50 years of accident-free driving without having such attachments to their cars. The quantum jump in the number of highway accidents is of recent origin. It is as recent as is the tendency of some people to fix such noise-making attachments to their cars. This is not to suggest that there is any connection between road accidents and the use of such cacophonous devices to attract attention to the fact that somebody is reversing a car. It is no more than an interesting coincidence. However, there is another interesting fact of life that deserves attention. A lot of the noisemaking vehicles are those used by the police. This is significant because one would normally expect the police force to be dealing strictly with all instances of noise pollution in the city instead of being responsible for some irksome acts of noise pollution. Perhaps a reminder of the fact that noise pollution does the greatest harm to children might induce those who cause noise pollution to desist from what they have been doing. They should at least be thinking of their own children even if they not bothered about how noise pollution affects others.