Abstract

About half a dozen insects are important forest defoliators in India, and they are primarily pests of plantations. No progress has been made towards their integrated management, in spite of some good beginnings in the 1930s. Socio-economic factors have been the main hindrances to successful development and adoption of IPM strategies against forest defoliators. Virtually all forests in India are government-owned, and forest pest control has been accorded low priority relative to the more pressing agricultural pest problems. Added handicaps are the small number of forest entomologists, their inadequate training in the concepts and techniques of IPM, the lack of adequate recognition and rewards for applied research, and the absence of purposeful research management at institutional and national levels in forestry (Which is being corrected with the establishment of an Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education) . In retrospect, the past neglect of forest pest control in