Mumbai goes loco over locusts

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, May 28

Videos of stray locusts spotted at Mumbai’s high-rises, located near mangroves along the city’s coastline, on social media, has given rise to worries about the city facing an imminent attack by a swarm.

“The locusts have landed! Welcome to Mumbai, locust ji. Feel free to mingle with our political pests,” writer and novelist Shobhaa De said in a tweet accompanying a picture today. Shortly afterwards people took to sharing pictures of stray locusts on window sills of high-rises along the city’s mangroves.

By late afternoon, officials from the BMC said there was no indication of an imminent attack by any swarm of locusts on Mumbai.

There is no information about swarms of locusts entering Mumbai via Gujarat as of now,” a civic official said.

Officials from the state Agriculture Department also pointed out that a swarm of locusts had caused damage to standing crops in the state’s Bhandara district and had entered Nagpur on Tuesday.

“The swarm is expected to damage the orange orchards in the area. However, there is no threat to crops as the standing crop has already been harvested and the next crop is due to be planted only during the onset of the monsoons,” an official said.

Meanwhile, officials of 11 districts in the state have asked farmers to stay alert about locusts attacking their crops.

Dr Kailash Shinde, Palghar district collector, in an advisory, said locusts land on standing crops at dusk to rest for the night. He asked farmers to spray pesticides on crops late at night and early in the mornings to get rid of locusts.

All through Tuesday and Wednesday nights, district officials in Bhandara and Nagpur organised large-scale spraying of pesticides after farmers, who were on a lookout for the swarm, raised an alarm when the pests landed on their fields.

The state Agriculture Department officials say spraying of pesticides on a large scale has considerably reduced the swarm. It will, however, take several weeks to control them, they said.