A city full of sound pollution

The appeal of a ministry to the city-dwellers for refraining from honking car horns for a minute late in the morning of October 15 was unusual. However, the display ad put up by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, may appear to be something quite amusing to many. It was because during the specified 1-minute space, when Dhaka roads remain choke-a-block with myriad traffic and people stuck there, expecting a horn-free metropolis may prove an exercise in sheer futility. City residents suspect the appeal made in the newspaper ad may have attracted people for its uncommon content. These rituals seem nowhere near achieving the desired goal of keeping a city free of honking, and, thus, sound pollution.
Calling Dhaka one of the world's cities most affected by sound pollution is no travesty of truth. This position of the Bangladesh capital in the perspective of the South Asian region remains almost the same. To its long-time residents, the deterioration of the city in terms of noise pollution appears to be highly appalling. Instead of graduating into a modern city with relatively less noise, caused mostly by the running vehicles, Dhaka witnesses an unabated decline in its sound pollution level. The other noise pollution sources are also there. They vary from the random use of loudspeakers, street hawkers' bullhorns, different types of construction work to the engines of aging buses. In this anarchic situation, the role of the police, especially the traffic police, and the auxiliary forces could be very significant. But the police personnel turn a deaf year to high decibel noises.
A general tendency among Dhaka drivers is to go about honking even when there is no need for it. This surely has a great role in the worsening of the capital Dhaka's sound pollution. Lots of vehicle operators use their horns in situations where honking leaves a psychological impact on people. School children and patients at hospitals or clinics are the worst sufferers. In many areas in the sprawling Dhaka, honking once remained strictly prohibited. Thanks to the sharp increase in the number of cars and other vehicles, the ban on using horns began fraying. Due to space constraints, kindergartens, schools and many small private hospitals are being set up near busy roads. This practice continues to expose scores of adults and children to excessive sound pollution --- especially those created by indiscriminate sounds of honking. Gone are the days when Dhaka boasted of its exclusive and quiet residential zones. With the encroachment of these areas by people with the least care for the bliss of quietude, those have also become chaotic.
Honking is strictly prohibited in almost all parts of the cities in the developed world --- leave alone the especially planned quiet zones. Few can get away with the law-flouting act of honking. It's because the patrol police move round the cities twenty-four hours. On the other hand, the general people feel discouraged from the obnoxious act like using their car horns, unless pressed by urgency. The habit of honking unnecessarily is found nowadays with many Dhaka youths. It eventually emerges as a behavioural disorder, or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as interpreted by psychiatrists. Given the various types of recklessness in making unnecessary sounds, this annoying pollution ought to have been declared a grave offence. Like the visible dust pollution, the insidious sound or noise pollution leaves a series of health hazards for the helpless people to struggle with. Acute auditory complications are among them. The city authorities have been successful in banning the unbearably noisy sugar-cane crushing machines on roadsides. There is no reason why they will not be successful in their campaign against other noise-makers.