Campus Women

But unlike the clubs where the university’s male members spent their spare time,the DUWA,with Deshmukh at its helm,would immerse itself in welfare activities,mostly aimed at education of the children of university employees,especially Class IV employees.

Uma Madan has been associated with the DUWA since 1966 when she came to the university with her husband TN Madan who retired from the university’s Institute of Economic Growth. New to the city,Madan found in DUWA a place where women of were doing things outside their homes. “It was time of the Bihar famine. I was new to Delhi then and was looking for a way to contribute,and DUWA was an organisation involved in social welfare,and so I joined them,” she says.

Apart from mobilising relief during the famine and lending a hand during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 (it set up a canteen in the New Delhi railway station to serve food to soldiers on their way to the battlefield),other projects included setting up of a family planning unit on the campus,followed by a nursery school and a women’s hostel.

DUWA also became engaged with the government’s aggressive family planning programme in the sixties and seventies,Madan said. But being a voluntary organisation,DUWA could not meet the targets that were set by the government and the programme was discontinued in1988, she said.

When Dr Nirmal Rajamannar joined the university in 1952 for a BSc in Zoology,her class consisted of just three students,including Rajamannar,the only girl in her class. Her first association with DUWA was in 1967,when she enrolled her daughter in the newly opened nursery school,then functioning out of a single hall on Chhatra Marg,where now stands a building block that houses the school,women’s hostel and DUWA’s day-care centre.

Attracted by Deshmukh’s charisma,Rajamannar would also become a member of the association. “Durgabai was very involved in the association’s activities,most of which were directed at the weaker sections of the society. There were committees which worked on different fronts. We used to visit the jhuggis near the campus for education and family-planning-related projects.”

Now as it approaches its fiftieth year,the association is no longer a central part of the life of the women on the campus,almost all of whom lead busy professional lives and have many avenues for public service,but in a quiet stretch of the campus,which it has inhabited since 1966, DUWA is still an integral part of the university.

Along with its hostel and skill development programmes run for girls from disadvantage families,a day-care centre that the association set up three years ago is another important service it provides, says Nilanajana Singh,the president of the association and wife of vice chancellor Dr. Dinesh Singh. The post of president is traditionally held by the vice chancellor’s wife.