Inspite of the so many utilities of this great plant of India as noted above, can we still find fresh uses from it to suit our modern needs? It seems we can very well do so. A few of these possibilities are listed below:
1. The tragic problem of blindness in childhood in India is not merely its gigantic size alone but the fact that it is wholly preventable and also curable. The chief reason for this affliction is that it is due to what is scientifically termed xeropthalmia, a vitamin A deficiency disease. This alone strikes more than 30,000 children every year. If this vitamin deficiency is made up in the diet of these unfortunate children the incidence of the disease will be largely eliminated. There is no reason why such a cheap and abundant source of vitamin A as found in neem cannot be explored towards this direction.
2. A very serious problem of the modern developmental activities in India is the unintended health hazards they bring about. India’s Green Revolution by which our agriculture has advanced by leaps and bounds now has been in the largest extent because of a heavy use of a varied number of pesticides. These chemicals kill the pests that harm our crops in their various stages-growth, maturation, harvesting, storage and so on. Unfortunately however these pesticides are all highly specific poisons and they do not “die” with the pests but continue to be present in the crop plants grown thereby. Infact, they do remain so persistently that even cooking will not render the vegetables grown with pesticides, harmless.
A planned attack on the menace of these pesticides has thus become a national need. Here, neem comes to our rescue. For, using neem even as fertilisers (eg. green manure) will kill the pests. Infact, it has been estimated that about 200 types of pests and diseases of crop plants can be controlled by the use of neem alone. More interestingly pests develop resistance to some of the pesticides employed to kill them. As such, the chemicals will becomes ineffective quite soon. Fortunately no pest seems to develop any resistance to neem.
3. Another equally serious problem of modernity is desertification, or the advancement of desert conditions into land areas which were previously fertile. This is a direct result of deforestation or cutting down trees indiscriminately and the consequent removal of a tree cover of the land,reduction in rainfall and the erosion of the exposed earth surface. The only remedy is to replant trees on a large scale, as rapidly as possible and as effectively as we can, on such deserted areas.
Neem is an ideal tree for any such measures of afforestation. It has been seen in the deserts near Jaisalmere, in Rajasthan that the only trees that could survive even in the hostile conditions of this desert when attempts were made to develop a green cover tree, were a clump of neem trees, and none else. It is better that our national efforts at afforestation should utilise such purely indigenous and highly useful plants like neem rather than the exotic and the controversial eucalyptus tree .which in addition is a great drain on the ground water resource. Excessive cultivation of eucalyptus is known to reduce the water table and promote desertification in the area where It is made to grow.
4. It has been well realised of late that we have in neem a huge untapped potential on many grounds. For one thing, it is very useful in controlling pests that do great harm in rice fields as well as many other crops. Tamil Nadu is quite advanced in the awareness of the value of neem even by the general public. Of the 1.5 crore neem trees in our country, this state alone has 25 lakhs. Even Governmental Agencies celebrate Neem Week here for free distribution of neem saplings among the agriculturists.
Everything produced by neem has some value, from leaves to seeds, oils and the oil cakes, barks and the twigs, fresh or dried and so on. Neem oil cake mixed with urea results in a better absorption of urea by the plant. Moreover the tree can be cultivated very easily in a variety of soils. Since the plant is useful; in diverse fields such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and even in the making of contraceptives, pest resistance and so on, cultivation of neem is always a highly economic proposition to the agriculturalists. Commercial scale of producing
Neem based fertilisers is also a very profitable proposal. Pesticidal potentiality of neem is still not yet exploited commercially. It may be noted that the leaves of bakayan are also commendable pesticides, and they are actually employed so in USA in the form of the fruit soaked in liquor and then utilised in preparing pesticides.
5. Neem tree is one of the best trees for growing on either side of the high ways of our country particularly since it can tolerate almost any type of soil and the cultural conditions are also not exacting. An early European author James Forbes (1813) actually records in his Oriental Memoris that beautiful neem trees had adorned major quadrangles of the Cities in India then.
In the garden city of Bangalore there had been a major road named Margosa Avenue. Neem is really the best indigenous avenue tree, because besides its rich, green, pleasing and dense foliage that affords a very refreshing shade on the hot highways, the tree continues to give such a shade specially in summer when most other trees shed out their leaves and stand naked.
It is time that we renew encouraging neem plantation wherever possible and include it heavily in our programmes of social forestry. Encouraging this purely indigenuous plant is much more profitable in all ways instead of the exotic eucalyptus tree that drains the ground water fully without offering any compensatory benefit, appreciably.