A lot of schools, courts and hospitals are no longer silence zones, presumably because the authorities don’t see why children need quiet places to study or patients need silence to recuperate. File pic

Here's something interesting I stumbled upon earlier this week. The website of the government of India's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has a page devoted to the Noise Pollution Control Committee. I had no idea this committee existed, considering I have seen little evidence of the ministry's work on climate change to begin with, but I was intrigued enough to spend a few minutes there.