Jaipur: Desert locusts have invaded India via Pakistan from Iran and are creating havoc across five states, including residential areas of Jaipur city.
They move in swarms and eat anything green, the size of their own weight, every day. With an estimated 80 million per square kilometre, and one swarm that entered India estimated to be two to three kilometres long, the destruction is heavy.
Locust swarms in Jaipur this morning. #MondayMorning pic.twitter.com/g5PpCQtb7k
— Rakesh Goswami (@DrRakeshGoswami) May 25, 2020
The locusts have reached Ujjain and Dewas in Madhya Pradesh, and have flown into Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
#WATCH Madhya Pradesh: Swarms of locusts seen at a village in Chhatarpur district. pic.twitter.com/jcfnlGTuR2
— ANI (@ANI) May 25, 2020
Videos of farmers and Jaipur residents trying to push them away are doing the rounds on social media. The locusts have started destroying trees after being unable to find crops in Jaipur city.
#2020 Locust attack Jaipur. pic.twitter.com/S5tJAITTQ6
— Chittukuruvi (@chittukuruvi4) May 26, 2020
The attack has wiped off crops from over 5,00,000 hectares in Rajasthan where they have spread to 16 out of 32 districts. Ministry of Agriculture officials are spraying chemicals to neutralise the swarm. Farmers are seen using desperate measures such banging steel utensils, playing loud music, running tractors inside fields or creating wood fire to ward off the pests.
In Gujarat, several villages in Lodiya, Savarkundla, Khambha Jaffarabad and Botad of Amreli district, Surendranagar and Bhavnagar districts have been affected. In Maharashtra, Amravati, Wardha and Nagpur regions have been affected too.
This is believed to be India’s worst locust attack in 27 years. Experts say locusts are a side effect of global warming which led to low rains in East Africa and the Middle East.
