While Punjab’s Malwa belt is witnessing rising incidence of cancer — largely due to addiction to alcohol and tobacco, and overuse of chemical pesticides — its dense cover of neem trees could well prove to be an antidote to at least one of these problems.

With Bathinda having nearly 4.5 lakh neem trees, the highest in Punjab, it is from this district that the state has made a beginning of its fight against overuse of chemical pesticides by promoting neem-based bio-pesticides.

The mission, in the process, is also bringing about empowerment of rural women. While women in villages such as Kot Shamir are now getting to be part of Punjab’s campaign of promoting bio-pesticides, they also earn at least Rs 100 a day by selling ripe fruits of neem trees (the fruit fetches Rs 3 per kg) and de-pulping them to extract kernels that are used to make neem powder.

Punjab is the third state after Maharashtra and West Bengal where the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers is funding the bio-pesticide project. The other two states have already taken to mass propagation of this low-cost, simple technology after three years of field trials in phase I of the project.

Punjab, which was included in phase II, is into its second year now and is conducting farmer contact programmes to sensitise villagers on the harmful impact of chemical pesticides.

“We are educating villagers on how chemical pesticides kill pests indiscriminately, including friendly predators such as beetles, which are natural enemies of these pests. Also unlike chemicals, there is no residual toxicity in case of neem pesticides after seven days and it only causes morbidity rendering the pests incapable of causing any damage to crops and not mortality as in the case of chemical ones. This belt is already witnessing the worst damage chemical pesticides can cause in the form of high incidence of cancer as the overuse has also contaminated its water resources and soil,” says Dr Dapinder Bakshi, senior scientific advisor with the Punjab State Council of Science and Technology, which is conducting the field trials.

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