Performance of success and failure in grassroots conservation and development interventions: Gender dynamics in participatory forest management in India

Co-governance of forests, or participatory forest management, has been a wide-spread conservation and development (C&D) intervention in India for over two decades. The practice began in the 1990s as Joint Forest Management (JFM), where local communities – organised into forest protection committees (FPCs) – worked in cooperation with various state forest departments. Later on, this intervention took shape of Community Forest Management (CFM), where communities managed their forests largely independent of the forest departments. Under both the JFM and CFM models, gender mainstreaming – enabling equal distribution of opportunities and services across genders – held a pivotal position. This study shows that despite continued marginalisation, female FPC members often performed as if initiatives were successful. Thus, the central question investigated in this paper is: "Why women performed success in participatory forest management interventions while experiencing marginalisation in the FPC?” This paper adopts an ethnographic case study methodology (immersion), utilising in-depth ethnographic case studies from three states of India for analysing performances of success and the resulting dynamics of participation, to explain the gendered nuances of the grassroots conservation and development interventions. The concept of 'situated agency' of community actors is explored to understand the practices around the performances of success in C&D interventions in forest-dependent communities in India. The paper argues that these performances hold the promise of a slow, but steady progress towards the creation of a gender-sensitive system in an otherwise patriarchal social structure.