New Delhi: An argumentative but less noisy urban India works better in the 21st century, the environment ministry suggested on Thursday by announcing stricter noise pollution norms. They would restrict sound levels from musical instruments as well as construction machinery besides the usual culprits as horns and crackers after 10 pm.
   That environment is interpreted in different ways by various sections of society has been evident and the ministry has accorded space to recent apex court orders on sound pollution to ensure that people in urban India have a right to peaceful sleep.
   One can’t expect the local police constable to roam the streets at night with high-end sound sensors detecting ‘noise criminals’, but the ministry has set lower permissible limits for noise between 10 pm and 6 am than that allowed in the day.
   As a first in the country, the ministry also launched a noise-monitoring network in seven cities to be extended to another 18 by 2011 at a cost of Rs 120 crore. The decision came after a pilot study in Delhi in 2008 showed that noise was 10-20% beyond permissible levels in several localities.
   As officials of the ministry narrated studies in Europe suggesting how noise caused damage to public health — amnesiac citizens stressed and strained — they along with minister Jairam Ramesh also admitted that India would remain a noisy society for some time to come. They mentioned the population factor. No one has ever been prosecuted in India under the noise-pollution norms, they said.
   The environment ministry, coping with an emerging area of jurisprudence—environment as a right of the country’s citizens —seemed to be extending an arm of protection over urban India even as another part of the ministry debates how to protect the rights of tribals over their forests. The new rules will now require state governments to designate 15 days a year when it will allow blaring PA systems to boom up to midnight and not 10 pm—for reasons of tradition, culture or religion.