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

  Of late, I have been watching the news of farmers’ agitation and also debates related. A large number of farmers are blocking traffic entering into Delhi from different routes like from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Some are displaying their farm equipment, machinery, others swords too. Placards are in plenty, some even not related to farmers’ demands. With stock of food in store, a bit of entertainment and time in plenty, these so-called-farmers have made roads their home for months until their demands are met. Earlier, they have resorted to rail blockade too. And this agitation has been going on for more than a month, largely in the state of Punjab, and to some extent in Haryana and Rajasthan. Fortunately, later, the rail blockade was removed. Probably it still persists to the varying level in some places. The farmers’ aim is to choke trade and services in Delhi so as it forces the Central Government to accept the demand of farmers to repeal the farm Acts that the Governmen

  According to Animal Welfare Board of India, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairy, Govt of India letter No. 9-16/2019-20-PCA of 16th Nov 2020, killing rodents using glue traps is inhuman, as it inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering to the rodents. It is a recurring cruel practice. And this is against the Prevention of cruelty to Animals Act 1960. Rodents cause damage to crops as well as in storage of food grains. I remember probably in 1970s my relative telling me that their wheat crop was totally destroyed by rodents. I am not sure of status of rodents causing losses in agriculture or carrying diseases to the humans. Surely, way back in 1994 that we had plague in Surat and some people died, part of the blame was on rodents spreading disease.    I know of one method of trapping rodents by baiting them in the wire-mesh cage and releasing them some distance from your home. It is humane, but unethical and disrespectful of fellow citizens for whom you may be creating a new nuisa

Sometime back, I commented upon the zero budget natural farming that lets crops grow naturally with least material intervention, more particularly bereft of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. The advocates of organic farming or natural farming believe that nature balances itself over the period of time and produces enough for its inhabitants. They do recommend the decoctions of urine, cow dung, fermented products that include extracts of plants that grow in wild, plant extracts per se, often in-edible for human consumption. Unfortunately, these products have never been tested for their safety to humans and animals, nor their impact on environment talked about. Being natural, these are assumed to be safe. Of late, these products are pushed under the pretext of agro-ecological engineering or agro-ecology as a basis of crop pest management. It is well known that agro-ecology is a basis of farming, and crop resilience has limits of growth if ecological parameters are stretched far and

  A post (related to motivational speech dated 11 Dec 2016 at Rotary Club in Chennai) I watched and shared on LinkedIn just now, urges a need to use sweet language irrespective of the circumstances or hopelessness of the meeting you are in. Why? Because, everything else that comes out of human body stinks, be it sweat, exhalation, urine, excreta, etc, etc.  Yesterday and today while watching TV programmes on the Hathras killing of a daughter of poor parents of backward class, we watched in horror the way DM explained to the parents of victim a need to side with administration and not to follow the demand for justice voiced by the media, as media will not be with them for all times. Now, spokesmen of the establishment are justifying crudeness and arrogance of police and admn, initiation of inquiry against victim’s parents, wrongful banning of movement of media which was reporting the case vehemently against all odds in the TV debates. A TV anchor of the programme I watched continued to

  Do not trust blindly an Artificial Intelligence-based system for identification of insect species Govind Gujar AGRIBIOSYS, New Delhi agribiosys@gmail.com The artificial intelligence (AI)-based identification is being used for insect pest identity under field condition so that the data are used for forecasting and decision making in respect of crop protection tactics. This provides for promptness and ease of operation unlike conventional method. However, reliability of the AI will depend upon the database of insect images. Further, most databases are based upon adult stages and hence, this system heavily rely more often on a stage which causes less or little damage to the crop. Our objective was to test one such AI wherein insect images are uploaded and analysed by the algorithm software that identify these images in respect of names-common as well as scientific name on the basis of similarity with the image(s) of the insect specimen in the database. I used http://pathangasu