GOVERNOR’S SECRETARIAT
ARUNACHAL PRADESH
ITANAGAR

No IPR (PR) 3/2009                                                     Dated Naharlagun Sept 7, 2009

PRESS RELEASE NO. SL NO – 878

State’s first lady inaugurates woman study and research centre at RGU

Itanagar, September 5: The Women Study and Research Center will introduce people to a new area of thought and knowledge from the women’s perspective, said State First Lady Anupama Singh, while inaugurating the State’s first Women Studies and Research Centre at Rajiv Gandhi University, Rono Hills, Doimukh near here on Sept 5 last. Congratulating the University for the Centre, she expressed her hope that it will become a centre of excellence of research and documentation on women’s issues, reports PRO to Governor.

            Highlighting on the paramount importance of the women in the society, Singh said, we can never ever underestimate their role in bringing about change in the society. She further said, women everywhere have their own problems and restrictions and we owe it to society to be able to analyze the status of woman and then finally to work towards formulating remedies for the problems that they face. I am sure that this centre will draw the attention of the people and policy matters towards women reservation, legal rights, and rights as an individual, she confined.

            Urging that the centre which is dedicated to the cause of gender sensitization programme along with serious academic research, Singh said, it should also formulate effective strategies to deal with domestic violence, mental health, mental distress and traditional women healers can be important field of studies.

Stressing on making the centre beneficial to the local people from beginning, Singh, who heads a NGO, MUSKAN, which works for women and child care along with other programme said, our studies should always be need driven, connection local context so that we can be first of all useful to the indigenous population. Whatever studies we carry out should not be a generalized view, but localized and preferably need based. They should reflect the difficult lives and world of the women in the state and also speak of their experience. Our endeavour should be to provide the much needed alternative perspectives on the context of education, health care and financial empowerment”, the first lady of the state added.

The center should organize workshops involving policy makers and administrators to drive forward its objectives, she advised added that it should also organize seminars and other activities at the district level, involving the political and grass root leaders of the area.

Addressing the function, RGU, VC Prof K C Belliappa informed that UGC has sanctioned Rs 5 lakhs for setting up of the center and also for organizing different programmes and activities. He further assured full cooperation from his ends to the center whenever required.

In her keynote address, former chairperson of APSCW Jarjum Ete asserted, since 14 years we are continuing to nurture for this center and now it is with us. She said people of Arunachal Pradesh are unable to acknowledge the women’s issues but with the establishment of the research center, she hoped that many women’s issue would be tackled by this center thereby benefiting thousands of women of this tribal state.

Earlier, WSRC, Director, Dr. Sucheta Sen Chaudhuri informed that women’s studies as a significant discipline have come of age in India around three decades back. The studies has inspired the engendering of documents and reports, whether at the global level, development reports at the national level as in the case of National Planning Documents or at local level in designing and implementation projects. She said the discipline identifies the concepts and methodologies of women’s studies as a faculty is growing in the systematic way and basically pivoted on the interpretation of text from feminist and woman’s approaches and aim at creating text on all the activities, contributions and relations of women from the women’s perspectives. The whole objective is creating space for women in the society and in decision making processes of developed and developing nations and to strengthen this systematic aim of Women’s studies, Dr Sen added.

She also informed that the center will intend to play an important role and be functional in facilitating the national goals of removing of poverty and discrimination through developing dialogues with various agencies of the state highlighting the direct relation of women and food resources in nature as well as in cultures.

Further, the Director informed the center intends to collaborate with Arunachal Pradesh State Women Commission in developing policy decisions through action oriented research on the problems of women in the state.

DGP Vimla Mehra and members from Arunachal Pradesh Women’s Welfare Society and APSCW among others present on the occasion.


Sd/- Purabi Taikam, PRO