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Where have all the butterflies gone?

Soumitra Subinaya*1

What would you tell a six year school kid who wants to go to the zoo
to see a butterfly?

Living in an urban area, a decade ago, I found many butterflies regularly

in my locality. Now sighting a butterfly in my locality is rare. What
happened? Where have all the butterflies gone? “To their homes”, I reply
to every school kid who is saddened by the absence of butterflies here.
Butterfly population has dwindled over the years. A lot can be attributed
to the loss of greenery in butterfly attractants in my area. Butterfly bush,
a butterfly attractant and common sight on roadsides across my city is no
longer to be seen. Imagine a sky full of colourful butterflies. How
breathtakingly beautiful! How joy-giving! How liberating! Whether it is
the butterflies’ scene in the movies Baahubali or Ek Villain amongst
others, butterflies have always flabbergasted us. Every time I say B for
Butterfly and the class repeats, I miss the butterfly. Interestingly, some
kids have started throwing butterfly kisses to the sky believing it would
fetch them butterflies. Some kids even ask me “How to grow butterflies?”

The act or the attempt to act to protect eggs and raise caterpillars till
they become butterflies which can then roam the open skies can be an
offence under the penal laws of India, if done ignoring the necessities
under the Wildlife Protection Act. Strangely, however, the law does not
forbid the manufacture and sale of insecticides that can be used in
kitchen gardens and home lawns against insects including Lepidoptera
which includes caterpillars. So you may not raise the caterpillar but if
nature gives you one, you can kill it as a pest. This situation brings out a
manifest discrepancy amongst The Wildlife Protection Act, The
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, and The Insecticides Rules 1971.
Hence, it is time we realize that to grow the butterfly, we cannot kill the
caterpillar.
On October 2nd, the world celebrated the birth anniversary of Mahatma
Gandhi as The International Day of Non-violence.
Mahatma Gandhi believed that Non-violence is the highest
accommodative consciousness and the story, that India is, embodies this
highest accommodative consciousness.
We, Indians, have always been accommodative of other life forms. In
Indian villages even today people live in harmony with creatures both big
and small. The thatched straw huts in many Indian villages still

1
Soumitra is a lawyer practising in The High Court of Odisha and a ten times
internationally awarded essayist.
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accommodate snails as much as the corners of the brick and mortar

rooms in these villages accommodate spiders. Even today in these
villages, grandmas softly dissuade any person from harming these
creatures by saying “Live and let live”. Living in harmony with nature
demands compassion for even the tiniest creatures on earth. While
private defence can be a ground to inflict harm, can non-usefulness of
any creature to human beings justify harming it at all or inflicting death
on it? Section 2 clause h of The Insecticides Rules, 1971 states that
“Pests” means any insects, rodents, fungi, weeds and other forms of plant
or animal life NOT USEFUL to human beings. Changing this section can
help prevent cosmetic use of insecticides. Should the killing of the spider
on my wall be allowed just because it is not useful to me? Should the
snails crawling on my garden walls and wall lizards be not protected if
they slide onto the other side of the fence and my neighbour finds them
not useful? Because I do not find the cluster of caterpillars on my tree
aesthetic, does that make it not useful to me and justify my spraying
insecticides on it to kill it? In the Indian cyberspace we can see many
insecticides on sale on many legitimate ecommerce websites which are
available for use in homes and targeted to kill Lepidoptera including
caterpillars, insecticides to kill lizards, insecticides to kill snails for as
low as Rupees 100 and insecticides to kill many other life forms that are
not useful to human beings. Before we climb the ladder to abolish death
penalty on human beings can we petition to abolish death penalty on
insects? Can we as a nation prevent the cosmetic use of insecticides?
Unlike a Parliamentary legislative action or Judicial ruling both of which
involve huge transaction costs, in our case all we need is amending a rule
and this involves comparably very low transaction costs.
I believe an appropriate amendment to the rule must bear strictness of
language and strictness of interpretation.

As far as the dwindling butterfly population in urban spaces such as mine

is concerned, we hope that the government accommodates the request of
nature lovers in India by creating "Free By-Fy Zones, that are, Free
Butterfly Fly Zones" in urban spaces where butterfly larval plants
plantation drives can be launched and caterpillars can safely blossom
into butterflies. Indian nature lovers are also looking forward to having a
national butterfly someday just like Maharastra now has for its state.

Cosmetic use of pesticides must be prevented because not only because

it is harmful to human beings and their valued pets but also because
compassion demands that one must not kill or use disproportionate force
on any creature howsoever big or small, except in private defence. Let us
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reconcile our right to private defence under the Indian Penal Code, The
Wildlife Protection Act, The Prevention of cruelty to Animals Act and The
Insecticides law in India in a way that we get a win-win between human
beings and other creatures. As the evolved Indian consciousness let us
get section 2 clause (h) changed for the better.