LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Hostile Weather Conditions May Drive Locusts Away

They are small; they come in groups; they can travel superquick; they possess a voracious appetite, they are locusts.  The farmers of multiple states of India are in awe of the  tiny insects.   Originating  from Pakistan, and having affected the farmers of Rajasthan, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh (MP), the small, but dangerous, creatures are moving towards other states through wind and in search of more food.   Their ‘love’ for plants  is phenomenal, and they attack in groups in  their hazardous  phase also known as  ‘gregarious’ . The insects are not alien to India.  Nor are they foreign to most of the global countries.  Preferring dry or bare lands for breeding, the locusts go for the deserts; therefore areas similar to, and consisting of, deserts are worst affected by the members of a family that also includes the familiar  grasshoppers.   Stray locusts, unlike ‘swarms’, are relatively harmless.  The swarms are the crop culprits.  They literally sing and dance as they cover a large area in twenty four hours to  cause maximum damage. Climatic change has aided the swarms to cause havoc in some parts of India.   

Ganapathi  Bhat, Akola  

Racial Discrimination Still Persistent In US

Massive protests over the death of a black man in Minnesota now being spread to more than 30 cities in the United States of America and fires burned unchecked and people ignoring curfews are engaged in large scale arsoning. George Floyd, a black man was killed last week after one of the officers, who was responding to a call about an alleged counterfeit bill used at a store, knelt on his neck while he was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground. Unable to breathe, Floyd called out, “I can’t breathe,” but the police officer kept pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost eight minutes in a most cruel and sadistic manner. By the time the police officer released his knee, the hapless Floyd almost lost his life. The officer Derek Chauvin and the three others were fired the next day. The police officer’s deliberate act of suffocating Floyd to death was captured on the cell phone by an onlooker and it soon went viral on social media platforms. Outraged at the way Floyd had been strangulated to death by the police officer, people flowed to streets and mass protests were taken out and protesters also started looting and police started shooting. A police station engulfed in a fire set by protesters. Is America going back to 18th century when the black people were treated as slaves?

T K NANDANAN, KOCHI