LOCUST MENACE

I remember in 1962 as a school going child I had seen that the sky of Delhi became like a night during the afternoon because of such a dense swarm of locusts flying over us in millions.

As if COVID invasion was not enough. While we are trying to grapple with this menace, locusts coming in a swarm like a storm is here threatening our crops and greeneries which improved environment because of lock downs had started to thrive.

Locusts (Tiddi in Hindi ) are forms of grasshoppers which are normally innocuous, their numbers are low, and they do not pose a major economic threat to agriculture. However, under suitable conditions of drought followed by rapid vegetation growth, serotonin in their brains triggers a dramatic set of changes: they start to breed abundantly, becoming gregarious and nomadic, when their populations become dense enough. They form bands of wingless nymphs which later become swarms of winged adults. Both the bands and the swarms move around and rapidly strip fields and cause destruction of the crops. The adults are powerful fliers; they can travel great distances, These Swarms have devastated crops and have contributed towards famines and human migrations historically . More recently these invasions had become rare because of better surveillance of locations and control of measures by insecticides from ground and air at an early stage.

This year locusts have been migrating from Africa to Pakistan, and have reached India, as of May 29,they are spreading widely. The states widely affected are Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Maharastra, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. This year, the locusts attack is worse in 26 years. A coordinated effort has been made to curb its spread.