Pros and Cons of Curcumin as Bioactive Phyto-Compound for Effective Management of Insect Pests

Phyto-compounds as insecticides have expanded impetus in recent insect pest management programme owing to health hazards and perpetual toxicity of conservatively applied deleterious insecticides of diverse commercial brands. Turmeric plant produces fleshy rhizomes of bright yellow to orange color in its root system, which are the source of commercially available spice turmeric. Curcumin, a Phytochemical gives yellow colour to turmeric and is used for time immemorial for most of the remedial practices. Curcumin is also used as a spice in foods, as a dye for fleeces and as an ingredient in dietetic supplements.  As root powder, turmeric is used for its flavoring properties as a spice, food preservative and food-coloring agent. Turmeric has a long history of soothing uses as it is accredited with a diversity of imperative valuable properties such as its antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and digestive properties respectively. The fresh juice, the aqueous extracts and the essential oil of the plant are endorsed with fascinating pesticidal properties against certain pests of agricultural importance as well as a perceptible repugnant activity against noxious mosquito species.  Results have exposed a pleasurable impending potentiality of turmeric as a natural pesticide for achievable use in current crop protection and thus an exceedingly promising future towards this route, that is, the possibility of effective control of certain pests of agricultural importance with the use of turmeric products as an economical and more effective eco-friendly alternative to chemical pesticides which is by now put into practice

Black money in India: Fighting specters and fostering relations

Since the 1950s, public discourse in India has referred to black money: undeclared or illicit income, sometimes in foreign accounts. Black money - so as to circumvent state taxes and controls - pervaded ordinary exchange and political financing. Today, large purchases have white and black ratios; public figures vow to retrieve black money in Swiss accounts. Black money is, at once, a means to transact business, a barometer of value, an elusive specter, and a moral outrage. It suggests how money can be differentiated, converted, corrupted, and disguised. This chapter is based on an ethnographic study of a Mumbai neighborhood marked by migration and informality. It examines the generation of black money from the diversion of publicly subsidized goods, the community’s assessment of these practices, and possible conduits for such income. Black money, I suggest, can be understood as a moral critique of money’s spectral and pernicious character, as well as a productive hinge between transactional orders and an expression of relational ties