Apropos of the news story “’Green sticker’ mandatory from mid-April” (THT, March 16, Page 10), the government seems to be sticking to some issues that are already in place.

We have had green stickers pasted on our cars for the past quarter century. If the government thinks that sticking green stickers on the vehicles will improve the physical environment of the cities, it is badly mistaken.

The toxic fumes, the pollution in the cities, especially in the Kathmandu Valley, can be attributed to generation of dust and smokes by government agencies, brick kilns and millions of motorcycles. Besides, diesel-fed vehicles, even the brand new ones, belch thick smokes.

Will the stickers on them stop them from throwing smokes? Everybody can see thick smokes coming out of the garbage-laden municipality vehicles on the streets of the Valley. Rather than wasting breath on green stickers, the government must come up with a viable plan to replace fossil fuel vehicles with the clean energy ones immediately.

It can announce a cut-off date for the replacement of all fossils fuel vehicles, including bikes. It should strengthen public transportation without waiting for metro and monorail or sky trains. Further, we can also stop dust, smoke, noise and disposable cups and plates pollution by banning parking lot, tea and momo joints right in the heart of UNESCO heritage sites.

The Patan Durbar Square has turned into a one big parking lot for motorbikes and a recreational centre for many. I like to urge all concerned to go to Patan Durbar Square in the evening on foot, as I do, and see for themselves what the place has turned into.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Humanism

In Stephen Hawking we have got an assurance that our evolutionary journey is indeed towards humanism. Unfortunately, human civilisations all over the world are yet to falsify the theory of “survival of the fittest”.

It has been, as it were, survival of the fittest brutes be it in a jungle or in a primitive society as well as in feudalism or in police state capitalism. But fortunately for us, after the emergence of welfare states such a brute yardstick is slowly but surely getting replaced by a scientific and humane one.

A welfare state is to create a level playing field for all of its citizens by taking extra care of the downtrodden, the poor, children, women, senior citizens and differently-able persons who have been exploited by the society for ages.

Stephen Hawking’s splendid achievements have showcased how far a person with almost total physical disability could go! Stephen Hawking will always be remembered as a super scientist as well as an empirical evidence that our evolutionary journey is not only from brutality to humanism but also from falsehood to the truth.

Sujit De, Kolkata