99 years of Indraprastha College for Women, 75 years of independence: What does education look like for the next century?

A year from now, in 2024, IPCW will celebrate hundred years of its existence. It will celebrate 100 years of feminism, activism, and resistance — a space that has enabled many to find their place in the world.

On my most recent visit to the college earlier this year, I saw the newly painted boundary wall — a particularly bright shade of orange that stands out in front of the majestic white building and lush green lawns. You may call this melody of saffron, white, and green a metaphor for IPCW’s place in the history of women’s education in India and the University of Delhi or you may consider it a parody of the state of educational infrastructure and public safety of women in the country. The choice is yours.

For me, the consideration is slightly more naive and foundational. This year, as we celebrate the 76th year of Indian Independence, how do we reimagine educational institutions for the next century? Where do we go from here?

On the IPCW’s 75th anniversary, Meena Bhargava and Kalyani Dutta published a book titled Women, Education and Politics: The Women’s Movement and Delhi’s Indraprastha College. In the book, the authors trace the origins of IPCW from an Old Delhi haveli donated by Rai Balkrishan Das in Chhipiwara to its present location at the iconic Alipur House in Civil Lines. By talking about the physical structure of the college, the authors explore the impact institutionalisation of women’s education has had. In the concluding line of the book, the authors write about how the college “has triumphed overall all to attain mellow maturity”.

For the next century, I don’t want “mellow maturity”. I want proactive, transformational institutions for education.

If you have studied at IPCW, or any women’s college in the University of Delhi for that matter, you will know what I mean when I say it is an exhilarating experience. It transforms you in ways you would have never anticipated. It gives you love, warmth, and unconditional care that fuels you to navigate an ambiguous and harsh world. An example: The recent (fairly viral) video of the two women security guards at Miranda House affectionately complimenting young students on their earrings and nail paints as they show their ID cards to enter college.

In the 2023 Union Budget, education has received an increased allocation of Rs 44,094.62 crore to “boost education, skill development, entrepreneurship, research and development, digital infrastructure, green growth and job creation, the Budget draws a meticulous blueprint for India at 100 and lays a solid foundation for transforming India into a technology-driven knowledge-based economy” according to Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Acknowledging the importance of all these practical skills and the need for technological competence, I would like to invite Indian policymakers to add institution-building to their list. To translate Pradhan’s army of skilled individuals and technology leaders into productive contributors to our economy, safe cocoons to think, experiment and question are necessary. Carefree naps in Delhi winter mornings are crucial. Feminist havens of comfort and support are critical.

To reduce education to a transactional exchange of knowledge acquired and economic value created is a ticking time-bombing of self-destruction. If we can add a metric of the number of safe spaces for intellectual exploration created to the list of skills we all seem to be obsessed with, we might just live up to our potential.

The juxtaposition of India at 75 and IPCW at 100 is merely an instrument to invite active discourse on the future of institution-building and feminist education spaces in India. As a young person myself, I would like people in positions of power to look at young India as more than a demographic dividend. I want them to see us as living, breathing people who might have the possibility of living a fulfilling life. At the end of the day, the measure of the success of an institution and a country is the number of metaphorical butterflies it creates.

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The writer is an incoming student at the University of Oxford and working on her debut book that studies ambition in Indian Gen Z