India last faced a major locust threat in 2007. Locust control is largely the Centre’s responsibility. The Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), established in 1939, is headquartered in Jodhpur and tasked with monitoring and controlling the insects in the desert areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat. It also liaises with other agencies concerned. However, the LWO field centres are crippled by shortages of staff and machines, with equipment both old and obsolete. State governments have had to supplement these, with Rajasthan providing 100 vehicles for surveys, 450 sprayer-mounted tractors for control operations and 50,000 litres of pesticides. The government has also deployed drones to spray insecticides but has avoided doing so with helicopters for fear of causing ecological damage. However, ground reports suggest that indiscriminate use of pesticides by farmers has caused significant soil and groundwater pollution. While minor locust infestations were reported last summer, authorities were slow to react. Experts suspect that this allowed locusts to breed, with new swarms also reportedly entering into Gujarat through uninhabited areas on the Indo-Pakistani border. Although attempts were made to control the problem fire engines were used to spray trees sheltering locusts at night factors such as an unfavorable wind direction made the problem worse. The direction of the wind is significant in determining the course a locust swarm takes; it is, therefore, difficult to predict the direction a swarm will migrate in. Another factor to bear in mind is that locust swarms can travel as much as 150 km in a single day, given favorable winds. These insects are also voracious eaters. A very small swarm’, say reports, can consume as much as 35,000 people can in a single day. For the opposition BJP in Rajasthan, the problem has presented an opportunity to charge the state government with poor governance. On January 24, BJP MLA Bihari Lal entered the Vidhan Sabha premises carrying a basket full of locusts to highlight the problem. On the other hand, state officials say their efforts with some help from the wind prevented damage at a much larger scale. On February 3, Union MoS for agriculture Parshottam Khodabhai Rupala informed the Rajya Sabha that the government would invite representatives from 30 locust-affected countries to prepare a roadmap to deal with the problem in future. Although the bigger swarms seem to have gone, for now, the UN and the Government of India are both expecting a rerun of the crisis around the monsoon. Hopefully, by then, state and central officials will have implemented coordinated mechanisms to deal with the threat. Source - https://www.indiatoday.in