In a major step towards empowering women and greater gender parity, the Indian Coast Guard has become the first force to deploy female officers in combat roles on board ships patrolling the country’s maritime zone near the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
‘These officers have been posted on board the Air Cushion Vehicles, popularly known as hovercrafts, in the Coast Guard and have been trained to handle all types of situations including interception of suspicious activity boats like the MV Kuber, in which terrorists carried out the 26/11 terror attacks,’ Coast Guard officers said.
Most countries employ women in various roles in their armed forces but only a handful, including Australia, Germany, Israel and the United States, have allowed them to take on fighting, or combat, roles. The aim of training these women is that they should be capable of handling all missions under the Coast Guard charter including boarding suspicious vessels, chasing such boats on high seas or catching contraband smugglers there, they said.
Asked about the deployment of women officers on these hovercraft, Coast Guard Director General Rajendra Singh said: ‘We are intensely passionate about true inclusiveness and empowerment of lady officers. While the Coast Guard celebrates four decades, as part of our commitment, we have appointed these four lady officers in combat roles.’
At the hovercrafts, the female officers are deployed along with senior male officers and sailors and carry out the same tasks that the men are expected to perform. At present, a total of 18 hovercrafts serve in the Coast Guard. They are attached to units in Okha and Jakhua in Gujarat, Mumbai in Maharashtra, Mandapam in Tamil Nadu, and Haldia in West Bengal.
The training of these women was started by the Indian Coast Guard about a year ago at its base at Mandapam with four female officers – assistant commandants Anuradha Shukla, Sneha Kathyat, Shirin Chandran and Vasundhara Chouksey
The Coast Guard started introducing women to combat roles after Prime Minister Narendra Modi – in an interaction with military commanders last year – urged them to give female officers combat roles and open more avenues for them in the services. Following this, the Air Force started inducting women in flying combat aircraft but that initiative is an experiment and the ladies have not yet joined operational squadrons. When the Coast Guard informed defence minister Manohar Parrikar about the induction of female officers in operational roles, he urged the force to look for more avenues to strengthen women officers there.
