For Whom The Decibels Toll

Law  | 28 January 2011  | print

Our noise pollution laws must be more measured and better attuned to the architecture of cities to be meaningful

We Indians are especially fond of noise. It appeases our gods. It makes us go faster on our pot-holed roads. It makes us better neighbours and fellow passengers on railway trains. Shouting into a cellphone shows how important we are (never mind that some of us like to shout into the wrong end of the phone). It also makes us incredibly stupid. When I once yelled at a driver for honking he looked genuinely perplexed and said, “but I wasn’t honking at you!”

For many years, civic and environmental activists like Sumaira Abdulali and her NGO, Awaaz Foundation, have been fighting for a more effective implementation of our noise pollution laws. It’s not an easy fight, mostly because enforcement is very difficult, and it’s not made any easier when they are criticized for ‘killing a city’s culture’ with their insistence that the law be followed even at outdoor events. Every citizen is entitled to demand that an existing law be enforced, and it is grossly unfair to blame Sumaira and her fellow activists for the consequences of their campaigns for greater adherence to the law. The difficulty is perhaps with the law itself, not with the demand that it be applied.

The Noise Pollution Rules of 2000 are framed by the Ministry of Environment & Forests under the Environment Protection Act. Contrary to public perception, these rules do not target only loudspeakers and public events. They are directed to all forms of noise pollution, from noisy fireworks to industrial activity and include vehicle horns, construction work, generator sets, excavation, drilling, blasting and mining. The purpose is faultless. The health effects of noise are now too well documented to be questioned: hypertension, anxiety, stress, aggression, sleep deprivation, tinnitus and, over prolonged exposure at high levels, hearing loss. It is not coincidence that noise was used as an alternative interrogation technique (“noise bombing”) favoured by the Bush administration post 9/11. Alex Ross, the New Yorker’s music critic and musicologist Suzanne Cusick point to the use in interrogation of music played at high volumes. The interrogators were partial to rap and rock.¹ Featured artists included Eminem, Dr Dre, Christina Aguilera, Metallica and, quite improbably, Barney the Purple Dinosaur singing “I love you”. Quoting a 2006 study, Cusick writes:

A long New York Times story on March 19, 2006, described in detail “Camp Nama”, the headquarters of a multiple-agency interrogation unit at Baghdad International Airport; there, “high-value detainees”-those believed to have information directly pertinent to battlefield movements, terrorist ringleaders, or imminent terrorist attacks—were sent first to the so-called “Black Room”, a garage-sized, windowless space painted black where “rap music or rock’n’roll blared at deafening decibels over a loudspeaker” (Schmitt and Marshall 2006). Read together, these reports suggest that the “deafening music” is usually delivered to a detainee who has been chained into a “stress position”, in a pitch-black space made uncomfortably hot or cold.

Noise-induced deafness results from a prolonged exposure to high sound pressure levels. Sounds over 85 dB can, over time, cause permanent deafness. As to the other effects, you only have to travel in a rickshaw or non-air-conditioned taxi in Mumbai or Bangalore to know first-hand what noise does to you. We are all familiar with nerve-grating horns, jackhammers and, in Mumbai especially, the hideous whine of marble cutting machines so popular with one of our communities that persistently professes non-violence.

In this, as in so many other things, religion complicates matters. All too often, and despite Supreme Court rulings on the subject, groups claim that their religion demands loudness.² This is the most complete bosh. Decibels know no theology. When a religious group blasts its worship it is only being despotic, imposing the will of a few on the many; and, as the Supreme Court says, even the reverse is untrue, for the right to quiet is part of the right to life, and there’s no fundamental right to make a noise (nor is it part of the right to free speech).³

Noise level gradations are fairly well established. Most agree that normal conversation sound levels are about 60-70 dB at a range of three to five feet. The distance is important, because noise slopes off as you get further from the source. A whisper is about 30 dB, a radio and normal street noise at about 70. Rock concerts can go from 115 dB to 140dB. Pain begins at about 125 dB. A jet taking off at 25 metres distance generates 150 dB and eardrum and tissue damage occurs between 150 and 180 dB. One of our loud firecrackers (those ‘bombs’) pans out at anything between 100 to nearly 150 dB. Awaaz Foundation’s tests of a number of noisy firecrackers in October 2010 show that none were below 100 db and some crossed 140 dB. During Diwali, the noise levels ranged from 80 to 120 dB and were much the same during the last day of Ganesh immersions.

The noise rules have four zones or categories (industrial, commercial, residential and silence) and specify day (6 am to 10 pm) and night (10 pm to 6 am) levels for each. The first problem with these levels is that they are arguably too low to be meaningful or capable of implementation. For instance, the residential zone day levels are 55 dB — less than normal office conversation — and 45 dB at night, about the level of a very soft conversation just over a whisper. For a commercial area, the levels are marginally higher at 65 dB (normal conversation level) and 55 db at night.

There’s something fundamentally off-kilter about this form of lowest-common-denominator legislation, one that homogenizes all places everywhere. Surely the ambient noise levels for Matheran and Mahabaleshwar cannot be the same as the Bandra train terminus?⁴

Mahabaleshwar is not Mumbai, and all cities are not Mumbai and all Mumbai is not the same. Mumbai’s architecture and urban form do not permit an adherence to so stringent a norm across the city’s entirety. In some places buildings are too close together, and streets are too crowded for the norms ever to be met. At other places, residences are far enough away, or are entirely commercial areas unused at night. Each city’s and area’s architecture and urban form demand more calibrated noise control, a more nuanced law that allows for differences in topography and the built form. Noise is an inescapable fact of city life. The question is how best to deal with it. Does a one-size-fits-all legislation ever work?

The noise rules define silence zones as areas within 100 metres of a hospital, educational institution or a court (but not a religious institution) declared to be a silence zone. Many such silence zones have been declared in Mumbai and it is essential to have one around a hospital 24/7. But does it make as much sense to preserve a silence zone around a court or a college even at night when the court and college are closed, and the area isn’t in a residential zone?⁵

The Kalaghoda arts festival is a wonderful celebration of Mumbai. There is a college and a reading room at one end, and a synagogue and a church further down Rampart Row. None of these are used at night. There are virtually no residences here. The only people here after 10 pm are, in fact, those at the fair. Why should a music concert, free to the public, not be permitted here even after 10 pm? Who is being affected by it, and how? Rang Bhavan, once a wonderful open-air venue, is now a derelict shell. It is right next to St Xavier’s College.⁶ Because of this law, St Xavier’s cannot hold a concert at Rang Bhavan because Rang Bhavan is within 100 metres of St Xavier’s (ditto Elphinstone at Kalaghoda). That is just absurd.⁷

Many who bemoan the death of classical music and dance performances simultaneously question the need for night-long dandiya-raas events and the noise at Ganesh Chaturti. This is a form of cultural imperialism, and it has no place in a city. Kishori Amonkar and Phalguni Pathak are both equally necessary, each to her own following. If Banganga, why not Babulnath or Siddhi Vinayak? In a hideous perversion, we are asked to accept noise when it is linked or related to some religious function or event, but not when the event is far more secular.

It is also a misconception that this law applies only to Mumbai. It does not. It applies throughtout the country. But it seems to be most applied in Mumbai where something like the Jaipur Literature Festival, featuring some open-air venues, is apparently impossible. Some claim that Mumbai is the third noisiest city in the world, but that roll of dishonour changes depending on whom you ask. Most agree however that New York, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Buenos Aires are front-runners. But New York has its open air concerts and festivals, and these are an integral part of the ethos and culture of New York. Cities are more than agglomerations of people. They are defined by what the users (and I do not mean only residents) of that city do when they are brought together by a shared interest.

A more rational approach would be to restrict noise levels in zones that need restriction when they need restriction (hospital round the clock, courts and colleges when functioning, residential areas after 10 pm, commercial areas that are unused at night for longer hours). This requires an intelligent and mindful creation of ‘sound zones’ governed by an overarching law that prescribes meaningful upper limits.

The argument that permissions be given on an individual basis will only lead to a greater imbalance. We do not need more exceptions, for every exception weakens the law. What we need is a subtler and more realistic law, one that recognizes the needs of our cities, one that adjusts for differences in land use, zoning, architecture and culture. In the attempt to preserve public health and safety, a city’s cultural soul is not acceptable collateral damage. If it is not the intention of our noise law to kill a city’s culture, then that should not be its effect.