Words: Nachiket Sharma
Images: Nachiket Sharma

Image caption: A Van Durga stands watch in an open field during patrol. During the monsoons, the risk
of elephants and rhinos straying into nearby villages increases, demanding constant vigilance.

2 February 2026

“Belonging here is produced through labour, staying, adapting, and responding to change—rather than through fixed claims to territory... presence points to a local mode of inhabiting ecological volatility, where conservation is enacted not as a singular intervention but as an ongoing, situated practice shaped by instability.”


Nachiket Sharma

In the floodplains of Assam in Northeastern India, Kaziranga National Park exists less as a sealed sanctuary than as a corridor; an administrated landscape shaped by animal movement, seasonal flooding, infrastructure, and enforcement. The park is home to over 2,400 wild buffaloes, hundreds of elephants, and nearly 2,600 endangered one-horned rhinoceroses. These figures circulate widely in conservation discourse, often presented as evidence of ecological success. Yet the conditions that sustain this success are inseparable from the material pressures that cut through the park itself. National Highway 37 slices across Kaziranga’s dense terrain, carrying heavy trucks and passenger vehicles directly through an animal corridor. Each year, close to a hundred animals are killed by traffic along this stretch. With climate change intensifying monsoons and destabilising seasonal patterns, the distinctions between land, water, forest, and asphalt collapse with increasing regularity. Floodwaters rise by several feet, forcing animals, people, and infrastructure into uneasy proximity. For local communities, this instability is not new; what has changed is the degree to which everyday life is now shaped by overlapping forces of environmental volatility, state policy, and conservation enforcement.

Kaziranga’s protection regime operates through patrols, camps, and surveillance. Conservation regulates movement, access, and behaviour across a contested landscape. It is within this framework that a unit of young women, locally referred to as the Van Durgas—“Forest Goddesses”—has been formed. The name itself is revealing. It merges gendered symbolism with state authority, transforming labour into devotion and discipline into virtue. While the term circulates easily in public narratives, it obscures the nature of the work beneath it.

02.

Two young Van Durgas share a moment of laughter while on highway flood patrol. Even in the face of rising waters and long hours, camaraderie remains a quiet strength among Assam’s women forest guards.

04.

A group of Van Durgas on patrol through the tall grasslands.

Walking with them into the grasslands, that gap becomes apparent almost immediately. We disappear into tall river grass within minutes, visibility narrowing to a few feet. The path closes behind us, and movement slows. Conversation thins out as attention shifts outward—to sound, and to a rhythm. This is not the forest as image or symbol; it is the forest as terrain to be read and negotiated. The Van Durgas patrol the park and its fringes on foot and by boat, depending on seasonal conditions. They carry wireless radio sets, rifles, khukris (short knives traditionally found in the Indian subcontinent), and handheld solar-powered torches. Their responsibilities range from monitoring animal movement and roadkill to conducting flood evacuations, assisting in anti-poaching operations, and engaging with truck drivers and nearby villagers to reduce wildlife casualties. Hours pass in waiting, and days blur into nights.

The work is continuous, routine, and physically demanding. Shifts are long and postings remote. Living quarters are modest, often shared, and frequently located in parts of the forest where mobile networks disappear entirely. Electricity is unreliable; nights are lit by lanterns. Mosquitoes gather relentlessly, biting through clothing and distraction alike. Fatigue settles into the body, and the forest becomes not a romantic backdrop but a workplace governed by schedules, and protocols. Forest protection in India has historically been a male-dominated field, shaped by colonial forestry structures and postcolonial enforcement logics. The inclusion of women marks a visible shift, but it does not fundamentally alter the apparatus they enter. Rather than transforming the system, these women are absorbed into it. Their presence serves specific operational and procedural needs, particularly in interactions involving women from surrounding communities, where institutional norms require female personnel.

05.

A Van Durga stands in the tall grass, rifle in hand, as the patrol spreads out beyond view.

06.

Walking through the forest, a Van Durga relays updates over a handheld radio

Yet the uniform carries its own weight. I remember them speaking about how wearing it altered the way they were seen by villagers, by passersby, and by their own families. The uniform offered a sense of pride, recognition, and standing that extended beyond the forest. Most of the Van Durgas are in their mid-twenties. Many come from small towns or forest-adjacent villages where educational and professional opportunities for women are limited. In rural Assam, girls frequently leave school early, and pathways into public-facing work are narrow. For these women, recruitment into the forest department offers economic stability, a steady income, and a degree of autonomy otherwise difficult to access. Some are the first earners in their families; others support children or extended households.

Several spoke about how their relationship to the forest has changed. Many grew up near these landscapes, but proximity did not mean familiarity. Spending days and nights inside the forest altered how they perceived it. Fear gave way to attentiveness. They noticed details they had once overlooked sounds, patterns, even silences. One even described a sense of quiet she had never known before, not the absence of noise but a steadiness that arrived only after long hours inside the forest. This transformation unfolded collectively. There was a noticeable togetherness among the women, most in their mid- to-late twenties, formed through shared shifts, shared quarters, and shared fatigue. Meals were eaten together, stories circulated quietly at night, support emerged informally, and often unspoken.

07. 

Inside a forest camp, two Van Durgas listen as radio updates arrive from patrol teams moving through the forest.

Seasonal flooding underscores that Kaziranga is not organised around permanence but around continual negotiation. As water reconfigures routes, camps, and routines, conservation shifts from a model of control to one of management under uncertainty, where work is repeatedly adjusted to environmental conditions. Within this landscape, the Van Durgas occupy a distinct relationship to place. Drawn from forest-adjacent communities, their work is structured less by mastery than by sustained attentiveness, repetition, or a collective endurance. Belonging here is produced through labour, staying, adapting, and responding to change, rather than through fixed claims to territory. Their presence points to a local mode of inhabiting ecological volatility, where conservation is enacted not as a singular intervention but as an ongoing, situated practice shaped by instability.

09. 

Along the forest’s outer edge, a group of Van Durgas walks a patrol route

Writer Bio

Nachiket Sharma (b. 2002) is a photographer from New Delhi, India, currently based in Maryland, USA. His work generally focuses on long-term projects centred around communities, humanitarian struggles, conservation, and the politics of representation, often turning to the everyday as a site of meaning. Nachiket is currently pursuing a BFA Degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the USA.