Govind Gujar: entomologist's journey to understand the Society we live in

Early this week, I got a call from Dr. Anil Kolhe, renowned entomologist of Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University to inform success of the campaign to control the pink bollworm in Bt cotton in Vidarbha, the rainfed cotton growing tract. As an entomologist, he as well as many others toiled hard to educate the farmers about the integrated approach to control the pink bollworm not only in Vidarbha, but also other areas of Maharashtra state that had witnessed huge losses in 2017. They carried out surveys for incidence of pink bollworm, talked about monitoring the pest regularly with pheromone traps, asked the farmers to be more discreet to use only approved insecticides and harvest the crop preferably avoiding prolonging crop season. The last operation turned out to be blessing in disguise as residual moisture in the soil was not enough to carry on the crop after November-December, as many localities had not received rains even from September onwards. The Government of Mahara

Sometime back, Shirish Sambre, a car engineer, sent me a WhatsApp note that the Government should consider installing electric vehicle (EV) kits for the 10-year old diesel and 15-year old petrol cars, in case these are in excellent conditions, instead of condemning them as scrap as required by National Green Tribunal (NGT), the judicial body empowered to judge the environmental cases. This suggestion is excellent. The cars will serve the purpose of environment friendly transport avoiding their journey to the heap of scraps which otherwise pollutes the land, jeopardizes the health of cleaners and becomes a disposal issue in view of limited space. This indeed set the ball rolling as I remembered the speech of Maneka Gandhi in our Institute’s auditorium on environmental pollution due to cars, many years ago. At that time, I was quite junior, earning a meagre salary, but dreaming of owning a second-hand car for the safety of my family and to fulfilling my ambition of owning one. Ms Gand