EDITORIAL: It says a lot that the prime minister took the trouble to visit the National Locust Control Centre (NLCC) on Friday to give 'in-principle' approval for initiation of Phase-II of the National Action Plan (NAP) for locust control. Just before that his government also decided to compensate farmers affected so far through a package. This shows that the government is finally giving the locust threat the priority it has long deserved. It is also reassuring that the PM said that the government would do everything possible to deal with this problem, since it involved something as serious as the country's food supply, but another part of his speech would have raised a few eyebrows in the provinces, especially Sindh. And that would be the bit about the need for a coordinated response from federal and provincial governments and organisations, otherwise crop production would surely be harmed. For it was only two months ago that all sorts of international organisations as well as provincial governments were setting off alarm bells about the severity of the problem, yet the federal government barely budged.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, especially, was shouting as loudly as he could since at least early March, when he wrote to the prime minister about an imminent locust invasion around mid-May and the urgent need for a fumigation campaign. He even requested six aircraft for a spraying campaign to kill the insects while they were breeding and nip the evil in the bud, so to speak, but the Centre didn't acknowledge or respond to the letter. And the only reason the summer crop hasn't so far been crippled, according to the presentation that the PM got at NLCC, is that some of the swarms moved onto India a lot faster than expected and a lot less came from Iran for reasons they don't yet understand. If not for this strange stroke of luck, if it can be called that, Phase-I would not have been something to write home about at all and the PM would not be able to shower any praise on his team. Still, it's not as if nobody suffered. Farmers have had to cope with needless losses, which is why there is now talk of a targeted relief package, and the government needed help from China, Japan and the UK for special drones capable of spraying over large areas - all because the government did not appreciate the gravity of the situation at the right time despite the unpleasant locust surprise of last year and warnings that this year was going to be worse even in the best case scenario. Surely, a little bit of Centre-province coordination around March-April would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.
And just because things didn't turn out as badly as they could doesn't mean we are out of the woods just yet. The prime minister was assured that everything was in order, but he was also given a glimpse of just what scale of a locust problem to expect and how much danger the country's food stock was really in. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) believes locust numbers in the country could grow as much as twenty-fold in the coming monsoon season if extraordinary preemptive measures are not put in place right now. Small groups of locusts that developed recently in Afghanistan could fly this way very soon, those that just moved over to India in something of a hurry could also come back, very large swarms currently near Somalia are expected here in the next couple of weeks, and those coming out of the Horn of Africa could be 400 times more than last year's numbers. Then there's also the local infestation, just what everybody was begging the government to do something about months ago, in no less than three provinces.
This is a very serious situation. Needless to say, of course, that the pandemic and everything it requires makes things much worse. Already there are warnings by some of the world's top organisations such as the UN and the WHO about very serious coronavirus-induced famines in many parts of the world, especially South Asia with its large population, weak economies and debt liabilities. The government seems confident about its preparedness for an unprecedented locust attack, but it remains to be seen just how successfully it can overcome some of its own prejudices and interact with all provinces and all parties when the situation demands it.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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