The swarm: On locust attack

Simply last week, eastern India was damaged by among the most effective cyclones in years and now, even as numerous lives are lost every day to the coronavirus, another risk prowls on the nation’s west. A burgeoning locust swarm in Rajasthan, Gujarat and even parts of Madhya Pradesh threatens to amplify into an agrarian catastrophe. The desert locust, as a types, is the bane of farming. Monitoring and taking on regular break outs of the marauding bugs are amongst the objectives of the Locust Caution Organization(LWO) in Jodhpur. There were 13 locust upsurges from 1964 to 1997, and after 2010 there was “no large scale breeding” reported. As soon as a considerable break out begins, it lasts for about two years, and after that there is a quietus for about 8 years. LWO authorities say that the swarm developing is potentially the “worst in decades”.

It is a testimony to its disastrous capacity that an arcane piece of legislation, The East Punjab Agricultural Pests, Diseases and Noxious Weeds Act, 1949, has an arrangement whereby a District Collector can “… call upon any male person not below the age of 14 years resident in the district to render all possible help …” and there is prospective jail time for failure to follow the law. Old a