I have recently been trying to work on the draft for a book that serves as a simple introduction to observing insects in India. Keeping it short is a REAL struggle! In wrangling with my thoughts I have tried to keep it short and reduce polemics! And yet.... Anyway, I do not know how much of it I might have to trim out. Here is an uncensored draft for a section (that may or may not have a place in that book!). I have tried feeding it to AI to rework sections but nothing was satisfactory. Unautomated human feedback and gut reactions are welcome.
How and what
do we know about the insects of India
If you took a picture of any insect
in say England or in any country in western Europe and posted it on
the iNaturalist
website,
you will probably see
it being
identified to
species within a couple of
days. If you tried the same
with an insect from India, the situation would be quite different.
You might
get the identification to family level, sometimes
to the genus and most
likely
no further. You might see
an expert who deals with just
that family or
group and comment
that your photo likely
represents
an
undescribed species or
that specimens would be needed. This difference in knowledge
availability (of
just a
narrow
taxonomic kind) on local life
forms has been variously
attributed to historic
influences that include
a supposed cultural abhorrence for killing, a lack of support for
curiosity-based questioning,
the difficulties of
maintaining reference
collections in the humid
tropics, the lack of learned societies (amid a caste- and
class- fragmented
elite within a largely
unequal and oppressed
society), or other
factors placed under the
rather large umbrella of colonialism.
Overall, we
can agree that historic
forces have
played a role in our collective ignorance of the smaller
life-forms around us.
People posting photos to a place like iNaturalist expect the name of
an insect. Typically this is a Latin binomial as the large majority
of insects do not have species specific names in English or even
other languages. Names in Indian languages for some groups have been
contrived and these are unlikely to be established unless there
is a multi-generational culture of study and use among speakers of that language and possibly also a culture of writing, printing, librarianship, and archival. The naming of insects under the
binomial system depends on institutions such as natural history
museums, collections in universities, specialists supported by
universities and libraries. Historically, the idea of
collecting species, pinning them with labels and giving them a
binomial name rose to popularity among the upper classes with large
homes, with both fashion and religion playing roles. Wealthy
collectors with leisure maintained private cabinets of curiosity and
admiring the variety of organisms was seen as a form of admiration of
God’s wisdom. The growth of colonialism made Europe's capitals into centres for harvesting and centralizing specimens from
around the world with long and wide networks that included native collectors,
colonial officials, ship captains, army officers, priests, physicians, and natural history traders. All
this was aided by the growth of Learned Societies, the printing
industry, and a class of people with leisure. This private industry involving wealthy individual amateurs
gradually became more inclusive, shifted down the wealth-class, with the growth of public-funded museums,
universities, research institutions, diversification of research, and specialization in the
biological sciences. Today, the old-fashioned taxonomists quest for
describing new species is looked down upon as a form of
“stamp-collecting” and most modern institutional researchers
examine speciation in an evolutionary light and describe new species
mostly as a side effect of studying evolution or ecology. Curiosity and
biophilia however are still a common connecting thread.
The seemingly easy act of giving a binomial name and categorizing an
insect is based on the slow and irregular accretion of thousands of
specimens by thousands of individuals (sometimes through a chain of
hands - a field collector who passes it on to another and so on) over
more than two centuries with specimens in institutions acting as a
memory safeguard along with publications held in libraries, allowing
verifiability across generations of humans. The act of formally
describing species also involves inventing and clarifying terms for the anatomy and
morphology of insects. Rules of priority and care for precision, long-term preservation of type specimens, and other aspects were slowly standardized. Specialists aired and exchanged ideas available in print
across time and space through their writings in journals, so
libraries have had a major role, and the socio-cultural role of
public libraries, societies, universities, and museums cannot be
down-played. The creation and maintenance of these vital spaces is driven by culture, politics, and economics.
Economics
drives the study of insects in other ways too. The
colonial Indian experience
with famines and epidemics led to support for research in agriculture
and public health. Some
groups of insects have been studied thanks to support by institutions begun in
British India. In
that period, it was generally understood that the key to managing pests was in finding
a weak link or dependency in their life-cycle that could be made use of in
management practices. This
encouraged the application of natural history observations and
biological research techniques. Much
of that
research happened in an age
when potent insecticides did not
exist.
Today, potent and non-selective insecticides are
used in prophylactic sprays (sprays applied on crops even when no obvious infestation is seen - often a mandatory part of a contract-farming package driven by a cartel of seed and agro-chemical businesses), killing life forms indiscriminately with extreme
efficiency, and posing long-term
risks that are either
overlooked or deliberately
hidden. The possibility
for mindless use of such chemicals, often supported by a powerful
chemical industry lobby has reduced support for the need
to study
insects. It has also reduced
the “value” of the
little collective entomological
expertise that was developed
in the past.
An
obsession with economic growth hinders
the recruitment of young people into curiosity-driven education
and research. The
study of local insects and indeed the observational study of most
other life forms has not had sufficient support. Much of the teaching
in India is old-fashioned and based on rigid syllabi and textbooks, rather
than being driven by questions and curiosity. Curiosity outside
academia has few places to go. Inside India's siloed academic
spaces, a class- and caste-ridden academic
hierarchy often seeks
to rise and separate itself
from the general
public. The lack of an open culture also limits interdisciplinary discourse and perhaps predictably, there is little locally-rooted
research. A system of rewards that academics have chosen leads them to
seek
repute
mostly among
western peers and there is no quest to develop local peer groups.
Against
this backdrop
of limited support from specialists within the country,
there has been a ground up movement enabled by the internet and there
has been a growth in amateur
interest among
certain classes. Self-organized
groups on Facebook, WhatsApp
and systems like iNaturalist
with thousands of
participants are mostly
ignored by public-funded
research and education
institutions in India. While
these have done a great deal for education, these
internet platforms are without problems. There
have been cases of opportunistic prospecting for new species and
there are many who indulge in
what has been called “helicopter research”.
The
National Biodiversity Act was
created to protect against it
but much of it is
unimplementable, given the
forces involved in making
laws, and the poverty of
expertise in the bureaucracy.
Fortunately for ordinary
Indian citizens,
the constitution says it is the fundamental duty
of every citizen “to develop the scientific temper”
and that should in
theory keep us
safe.
When
Carl Linnaeus, born in a biologically low-diversity temperate zone, established the system of binomial nomenclature, he
believed that every species had been created by god (specifically a Christian one, and by extension that they had to fit on a certain ship) thereby assuming that there were a reasonably small and finite number of them. The
idea that species were created
by a god
effectively ended (at least for the scientifically inclined) in 1859
with the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Today, it is rather
unfortunate that most biology teachers avoid debates on creation and evolution that would require the questioning of
religion and tradition. The study of life forms is an
active form of learning and requires the questioning of passively received ideas.
Now
the study of insects is certainly not limited to giving them a
binomial name. It is just the librarianship of life forms. A first step in literacy, an aid to allow people to study and compare notes on
what they think is the same entity. Learning
more about the life of the insect on
your own can be incredibly
challenging and also very thrilling. This is an area where ordinary
people have an edge over museum specialists in far-away locations.
Specimen identification based
on reference collections often relies on the forms of adult insects,
often in damaged and discoloured conditions. In the vast majority,
the immature stages are completely unknown. There
are an infinite number of contexts in which one can examine
insects
and what they do. Looking at them does not need the permission of a Colonial forest department that gate-keeps the wilderness. There is no
shortage of them in the backyard, and they are endlessly fascinating in the diversity
of form and habits. They are the most significant herbivores on the
planet and have altered the way plants live for millions of years before the arrival of land vertebrates. Their
study has applications in so many fields
– people have studied them to make computers more reliable, systems
more resilient, looked at their colors and structures for inspired
applications in chemistry and physics. Being easy indicators of
ecology, they are indicators of changes around us, and yet we have a
studied ignorance of these – the smaller majority – of life forms
around us.
