Eligibility criteria for IFS to be widened

The ambit of the Indian Forest Service (IFS), the only national cadre dedicated for managing forests and wildlife, will be widened to include graduates from the Indian Institute of Forestry and that of science and technology. Chetan Chauhan writes.

Updated on: Jul 3, 2011, 22:28:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The ambit of the Indian Forest Service (IFS), the only national cadre dedicated for managing forests and wildlife, will be widened to include graduates from the Indian Institute of Forestry and that of science and technology.

The environment ministry has decided to expand the eligibility criteria for IFS, started by British in 1864, as part of an exercise to restructure the forest bureaucracy with an aim to make it modern and competitive.

In the recent years, the role of forest officials have widened with increasing interface with local communities and inclusion of scientific tools in managing forests. And, therefore the eligibility criteria has been widened. However, a committee on restructuring of IFS said the issue of emerging challenges for IFS officers can be dealt by widening the training at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, where they are trained.

In a bid to get better quality candidates for IFS, the committee has recommended an aptitude test to be conducted by the UPSC in English language and general study. The environment ministry has been asked to work out the modalities for the test.

But more candidates would be able to apply as the environment ministry has decided that the IFS will be conducted in all languages as applicable for other all Indian service examinations. The decision was taken by environment minister Jairam Ramesh even though the committee was not in its favour. "If IIT-JEE examination can be conducted in all Indian languages why not the IFS?" the minister asked.

India has 3,034 IFS officers with 66% of them being direct recruits and remaining promoted from state government forest cadres. But in the last 14 years more number of officers than required were hired resulting in reducing promotion avenues, resulting in frustration in the cadre, the committee said.

To overcome the problem, the committee had recommended that on average 71 IFS officers should be hired every year keeping in view the retirement of IFS officers in the next 20 years.

The committee also recommends restructuring of the state forest departments to reduce the number of vacancies in the frontline staff. There is about 20% vacancy in frontline staff which needs to be filled for better management of forests.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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