Auto-Rickshaws of Calcutta (Kolkata)

March 2009
For the last six months, the West Bengal government has been sitting on its hands over the July 2008 High Court order to ban the two-stroke auto-rickshaws. It wakes up ‘one fine morning’ on January 1, 2009, and fonds that they would have to eliminate sixty-thousand autos at one go. So, the government decides to ‘go slow’. How slow? Well, they seize ninety autos in ten days! That is slow enough, considering that the target is sixty thousand. Does anyone remember our Chief Minister’s slogan “Do it now”? It appears he himself has forgotten his motto.
The fact is that the West Bengal government is not keen on banning the two-stroke autos for the sake of its vote-bank. After all, the ministers and the bureaucrats spend their time in air-conditioned offices and travel by air-conditioned cars. So, they don’t have to breathe in the Kolkata air, rendered carcinogenic by the katatel-fuelled autos. For the ordinary mortals, let them suffer from chest cancer and be damned.