Green Queens –occupy centre stage in India’s forest leadership
VK Bahuguna
August 2, 2025
On 20th July 2025 the Indian Forest Service (IFS) Central
Association a body representing the service officers and a voice for profession
related matters of more than 2700 IFS
officers in the country; in an epoch-making decision selected in its General
Body meeting constituted an all-women executive committee to steer the
leadership of not only the IFS but all ranks of country’s forest department.
The foresters have set a new ground breaking historical trend in the civil
service echoing the clarion call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to involve the
women power in all fields of governance and under his leadership already the
constitution one hundred and twenty eighth amendment bill for women reservation
in Parliament and state assemblies was passed by the Parliament in the year
2023. The bill was lingering since past
several years. The passing of the Act was an affirmation of country’s resolve
to promote inclusivity in democracy and to give equal right to 48.5 % of the
population of the country their share in law making process. The IFS
association has taken the initiative to implement this inclusivity with a major
factor of giving their service association in the hands of green queens which will
have a lasting impact on the way forest and environmental conservation are
guided by their officers. This may very well harbinger a new era in civil
services at the broader platform of ensuring equity and gender parity.
The women strength had steadily grown in forest services a
field until 1980 was the sole domain of male. In 1980 three women were first
chosen for the first time in forest service nineteen years after the IPS had
chosen their first lady officer. Since then, till 2021 around 284 women were
serving in IFS constituting around 9% of the total strength of IFS cadre in the
country. The maximum numbers of 22 women each were selected in the year 2023
and 2024 batches touching a highest figure of 20% so far in a single batch.
Compared to IFS in IAS till 2020 since 1951, out of 11,569 IAS officers 1,527
were women (around 13 %). Similarly, IPS have till 2023 12% women roughly 590
against the total cadre of 4900. The highest percentage of women in IRS was in
the 77th batch of 2023 out of 90 officers 35 are women. If we take the strength
of women in regular public service employment in India across all sectors it
was 28.1% in 2022. Thus, the women power is increasing in all walk of life and
this landmark decision will definitely help provide a varied voice specially to
Trees and wild animals who cannot speak about the unfair treatment the nature
is receiving at the hand of human being.
Now let us discuss the role this all women team will achieve.
We must however, be clear that association can only indirectly influence the
decision making in the government and has no direct role in policy and
administrative matters. However, as forests, in rural and tribal areas greatly
contribute to women’s social identity, economic independence, and growth
opportunities, women have scope for better participation in forest conservation
and governance. Though the concept of Self-Help groups through Panchayats and
Joint Forest Management has given a significant role to the women with
spectacular success, similar, scope is yet to be harnessed for the Forest right
Act 2006 so that the women can work for making these lands productive and also
check further encroachments like the Chipko movement of Uttarakhand did in
early seventies when ‘Gaura devi ’and her women group made history and changed
the course of how forests should be governed.
The women staff can play a significant role in reducing the drudgery of
women and promote their livelihood with empathy. In this regards the new executive
committee of all women IFS can promote specialized training, gender-sensitive
infrastructure, and policies and leverage their unique strengths in community
engagement and ecosystem knowledge at the grass root level in forestry and
other diverse fields in the government by reforming systemic barriers and promoting inclusivity,
empowering women to lead transformative change in forest conservation, climate
change, bio-diversity conservation and sustainable rural and tribal
development. For this, the women team had to be proactive in contacting the
state association and take initiative to represent the entire fraternity of the
forest departments irrespective of ranks.
As for service interests one of the first task the committee
should do is seek an appointment with the Forest Minister and the Prime
Minister and discuss the opportunities for more involvement of women in
particular and forest service in forest and environmental conservation. One of
the key issues is degradation of ecosystems specially highlighting the natural
disasters in recent years occurring in Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Sikkim and
Uttarakhand etc which are mainly due to poor planning and lop-sided
development. One thing most of the international and national summits miss on
climate change, bio-diversity conservation and desertification is the
contribution the individual families can be made. The women play a key role in
grooming the children to look after their environment and culture and
civilizational teaching. If each family can start saving on energy and change
their life style like judicial use of water in homes etc by adjusting to the
needs of climate change a lot can be achieved to mitigate climatic changes. Now
the time has come to assert the leadership role for the women in the field of
forest conservation and environment and tribal development. The government need
to be more professional in decision making process compared to expediency
dominated approach.
Yet another arduous job is to network positively
and remove the perception that the forest officers as road blockers for their voters’
interests which is not a fact but a pure bogey to obfuscate the real issues by
the vested interests in government and outside. It not only denies the due
recognition to the department in conserving and protecting our forests so
essential for our food, water, medicinal, environmental and nutritional
security in spite of huge population and cattle pressure on forests. Let us
wish our best to this women team.
(The writer is
former Director-General ICFRE in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and
Climate Change, Government of India and
Chairman of Centre for resource Management and Environment)
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