The West Bengal Government is lukewarm on the idea of implementing the ban, but constrained by the courts to do so, it has bowed to the inevitable. Since the State Government has been unsuccessful in doing what New Delhi did, by all accounts, with reasonable success, that is, converting toxic fume emitting public transport into clean fume emitting public transport via CNG use, banning the worst polluters seems to be the only, however reluctant, option. Clearly, the Joint Council and the State Government are hoping that desperate commuters will create conditions for a roll-back, even if it is temporary.

A bus strike will mean unbearable hardship for commuters, because according to the Joint Council's estimate, around 75 per cent of the buses plying on the roads are overage. Owners maintain that they cannot afford to cost of replacement, since often their earnings are less than that of the bus driver and conductor.

Trapped between bus owners who are determined to squeeze every last paisa of profit out of overage buses that overwhelmingly contribute to the city's toxic air and an ambivalent State Government that prefers taking the short-term view rather than engaging in a long term battle against pollution, the commuter is faced with an impossible dilemma. The commuter knows that the buses are spreading poison, yet the commuter has little choice.

The result is a curiously complex response, through the interstices of which civil society takes a beating while the polluters go

scot-free.

The strikingly simple connection of how pollution affects the population was evident on Thursday morning on the busy road that goes past the Park Circus municipal market. One of the estimated 10,000 unauthorised heavy vehicles that enter the city at night had spilt a dangerous slick of engine oil on the road, transforming it into skid row.

Accelerating cars banged into each other, two-wheelers went amok, the busy street was log-jammed and finally the shopkeepers and locals got into the act. After witnessing 10 minor accidents, the shop keepers decided that maintaining a vigil on the road was more important than going about their daily business.

What made the road into a potential death trap was not just the oil spill; the road was covered with an invisible slick - a lethal combination of the greasy soot that envelops the city in winter and roads that had not been washed well enough to remove market garbage smoothed into the surface by countless vehicles over several weeks.

One shop owner complained, if they washed the roads, instead of going through the motions for the benefit of the ministers, we would be is less danger. The combination of an oil spill and the slick of dirt was a lethal cocktail against which the locals had only one defence - drop working and start traffic management, because preventing accidents is possible, even if controlling pollution is not.

According to a now famous study by the Chittaranjan Cancer Institute and Environmental Biology Laboratory of the department of zoology, Calcutta University, chronic inhalation of Kolkata's air causes decline in lung function in a significant percentage of residents. An estimated 47-48 per cent of people in Kolkata are in morbid danger from the air they breathe. The study identified students, office workers, hawkers, garage workers as the most vulnerable groups.

During winter the urgency of bringing down air pollution levels increases, since December and January are, according to every study, the worst times, when Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter is so high, especially at night that a hacking cough is the least of what can strike a commuter. Long-term exposure could mean a proportionately high risk of cancer.

Even as West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee pursues his dream of converting the State into one of India's most desired destinations, he unfortunately, has found little time to pay attention to that elusive idea - quality of life. Intent on persuading the investor and wooing the middle class, the Chief Minister has, it would appear, forgotten that things like clean roads and clean air matter as much as clean chits from Wirpo boss Azim Premji and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

If, as cynical Kolkata, expects, the bus strike will peter out under pressure from desperate commuters, it will be at public expense. For every overage bus and taxi spreads millions of RSPM with profitable abandon, adding toxins to the air and covering the streets with a greasy slick that can turn any stretch of it into death row.