Talking from the European experience, he says, that alternative fuels are not the answer to controlling pollution but the solution lies in providing better quality diesel and petrol along with superior technology engines. ``A few CNG buses on the road are not going to make a big difference. The culprits on Delhi's roads are the two and three wheelers along with the cars. These vehicles will be on the roads for years to come and bringing down the pollution will have to mean better diesel and petrol.'' Cayot felt that these two fuels played afar larger role in day to day movement of vehicles and the government will have to make improvements in the quality of fuel. ``But the automobile industry too has to make drastic changes it its engine technology so that the particulates and exhaust fumes come out cleaner,'' he says.

This is not an achievement that can happen overnight, he admits. ``It has taken Europe 20 years of stringent laws to keep the levels of automobile pollution down,'' he says. The levels of pollution in France, for example, he says, are down by more than 50 per cent and by 2010 will be very low, he says. ``Automobile companies are working on engines that will have particulate traps which will make them clean before they are let out into the atmosphere,'' Cayot says.

Automobile companies, he admits, are more bothered about the safety of the passengers, engine technology and interiors than about pollution. ``But the only way this can work is stringent legislation, and enforcement by the government,'' he says. In Europe, with theEuro norms going into stage II and work on stage IV already underway the new health hazard is not from automobile pollution but from smoking. ``Health workers are worried that there are more than 100,000 men per year lost to smoking as compared with air pollution, which claims only 30-100 men per year,'' Cayot says.

The calculations are based on the age at which a person dies of lung or throat cancer due to smoking compared with deaths due to pollution, and the number of years lost due to the death of a person at a certain age is what is added to the tally. He sees a mountainous task ahead for India in eliminating pollution hazards and it will have to work harder to achieve the European standards and maintain them, he concludes.