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VIDYABEN SHAH & MANUBHAI SHAH

Life and Times



Welfare Work of Vidyaben Shah
 

Winner of the National Award and Kalpana Chawla Excellence Award for Social Work

Vidyaben Shah is a distinguished social worker known for her selfless social work, activism and public service in the betterment of Indian society for nearly eighty years. Her activities are notably marked by a quiet unassuming demeanour, a tireless dedication, where work is a form of worship, without any thought for any kind of personal gain. She has held several leading positions in the field of social welfare since the 1930s. Over the decades, she has continued to make extensive contributions in the fields of Child Welfare, Education, Women and Family Welfare, Welfare of the Disabled, Civic Administration, Fine Arts and Culture, Senior Citizens Welfare, and other relief and social work.

A lot of Vidyaben’s work has not even become widely known. In the middle of a summer afternoon in Delhi, she can be seen standing in front of a bulldozer in a residential colony. On another day she may be getting a barrier removed which was threatening the foundation of a building and no one else was daring to help. On hearing of child abuse, she would contact parents or teachers and fight for the child. She has been seen taking an initiative after reading a newspaper article to get justice for women who were victims of abuse. She would not rest until a power or water or drainage problem was solved be it in a basti or a housing colony, often providing highly innovative solutions such as rainwater harvesting and landscaping community parks, showing the same enthusiasm as at the age of 21 while living in a hostel she had become surrogate mother to many young girls from Africa who had been sent by their parents to study in Bhavnagar (Gujarat). The narrative being endless, she appears to be the quintessential ideal Indian woman.

In 1948, Vidyaben was appointed the first Honorary Magistrate for Juvenile Courts in Rajkot, a post she held for 8 years.

Child Welfare

Pioneering the Bal Bhavan Movement in India

A pioneer in the field of child welfare, Behnji or Vidyaben, as she is affectionately known, initiated the Bal Bhavan movement [1] by establishing in Rajkot the first ever Bal Bhavan in India, which was to become a harbinger of the entire Bal Bhavan Movement throughout the country. In 1955, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited Rajkot accompanied by Indira Gandhi who laid the foundation of the Bal Bhavan building. Vidyaben still remains the Chairperson of Bal Bhavan at Rajkot[2]. In 2007, through her concerted efforts, the New Bal Bhavan was set up in Rajkot with a highly modern Arts and Science Centre for underprivileged children.[3]

Vidyaben addressing Bal Bhavan rally in 1954; seated on the dias are Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Manubhai among others
Vidyaben addressing an audience of children at the inauguration of the first Bal Bhavan in India in 1955; seated on the dais are from L to R, Rajpramukh Jamsaheb, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Chief Minister Rasikbhai Parikh and Finance Minster Manubhai Shah

Establishing State Councils for Child Welfare

Vidyaben started the “Child Welfare” Movement in Gujarat by establishing the Saurashtra Council for Child Welfare in 1953 which was also the beginning of an exemplary child welfare movement outside Delhi, spreading across the country. She set up Child Welfare District Councils in all the districts of Saurashtra with training centres to train child welfare workers in all the districts. She also set up 100 Balwadis throughout Saurashtra providing services for 90% growth of the child to take place for children up to  6 years of age.

Bal Sahyog in Delhi

In 1956, when her husband transferred to New Delhi to join the Council of Ministers in the Cabinet of Pandit Nehru, Vidyaben brought her activism to Delhi. From 1956, she was actively associated for four decades in New Delhi with Bal Sahyog, a unique institution established for the rehabilitation of vagrant children. Vidyaben became President of Bal Sahyog in 1966 and remained its President for the next ten years. During this time with the help of her husband she started many innovative workshops for the children providing them with skills to make furniture and other handmade items. Having run a boat club at the Rajkot Bal Bhavan, she brought over a boat from Bal Bhavan in Rajkot all the way to the Bal Sahyog in Delhi and with it she started the first ever boat ride at Delhi's India Gate which now entertains thousands of people every week from all over Delhi and beyond.

Action against Child Labour

In Delhi she joined the Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW) in 1960 becoming its President for 12 years from 1976 to 1979, and 1985 to 1994.[4] She influenced the Government to start the Anganwadi Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme in 1975. In the 1970s, considered as pioneering and revolutionary work, Vidyaben had already started working against child labour and persistently tried to influence legislation on child labour. Subsequently, under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986, she took steps to curb child labour in many areas of the country. Notable examples of her work include actions in factories giving hazardous jobs to children, such as the Firozabad glass factories and glass bangle works near Agra where children were found working even under conditions of temperatures near the coal-fired furnaces rising to 75 degree C and surface temperatures being 300 degrees C sometimes rising as high as 1200 degree C. Vidyaben first spoke to the parents and convinced them of the hazards for the children and with their permission took action to remove 500 children from the factories to start with; simultaneously she established centres for education and vocational training of these children. She took similar steps in factories producing locks in Aligarh and in the brass industry in Moradabad where children were employed in making brass vessels. Most notably, Vidyaben went to Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s to remove children from the fireworks industry, and the actions she took have had lasting impact whereby fewer and fewer children have been employed in producing fireworks in Sivakasi since 1986.

As President of ICCW, Vidyaben established a Holiday Home for children in Gurgaon where children removed from working in factories as well as other children from all over the country could come who would not otherwise have the resources to enjoy an educational and recreational holiday.

Vidyaben represented India at the United Nations International Year of the Child conference at Tashkent in 1979. She also attended International Conferences on children held at Tehran, Geneva and Birmingham, USA. She attended the 6th SAARC Summit in Colombo in 1991. She was Chairperson of the Christian Children’s Fund Advisory Board for 5 years. For three years between 1990-93,  she was the President of the Delhi State Branch of the Bharat Scouts and Guides, an organisation devoted to the cause of children and national reconstruction.

Vidyaben Shah receiving the National Award for Child Welfare in 1987
Vidyaben Shah received the National Award for Child Welfare in 1987

Institutional builder in education of children

Vidyaben has played the most pioneering role in the field of education of children. As President and active Trustee of the Delhi Gujarati Samaj for 40 years from 1958, she started the LNT Gujarat Senior Secondary School in Old Delhi, where over 1000 students from underprivileged backgrounds pay very nominal fees. Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation of the school in 1963.

Vidyaben speaking at the inauguration of the Gujarati Samaj School; Pandit Nehru (seen at far right) laid the foundation of the school
Vidyaben speaking at the inauguration of the Gujarati Samaj School; Pandit Nehru (seen at far right) laid the foundation of the school; also seen
in the picture are Commerce and Industry Minister Manubhai Shah, Minister for Labour Jaisukhlal Hathi, Shrikantbhai and Shri Gaurishankar Rawal

In 1956, the then Congress President Shri U N Dhebar and General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Shri Balwantrai Mehta invited Vidyaben for a meeting in Delhi saying that seeing her work for children in Saurashtra she should agree to help establish a school excelling in education for Gujarati as well as other children in Delhi. It had been agreed with Dhebarbhai and Balwantbhai that the school would be called Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. Land had been acquired and the foundation of the Vidyalaya was laid in 1956 by Shri U N Dhebar. The Gujarat Education Society (GES) was registered with Mr H M Patel as its first President. Vidyaben initiated the process of setting up the school and brought together other leading Gujaratis in Delhi for the purpose. Systematic as she is known to be in all her initiatives, Vidyaben took the next step of helping raise the required funds, and with that the school building was constructed in good time. Subsequently she became President of GES and remained in that position for many years, running the Vidyalaya with great efficiency and vigour and playing a leading role in the establishment of one of Delhi’s most renowned schools excelling in education, sports, culture as well as other extra-curricular activities. She has been singly instrumental in establishing another school named Sardar Patel Vidyaniketan, a school in the rural village of Mandi near Delhi. The school is run by Gujarat Education Society and caters to the economically weaker sections of society and especially encourages education of girls. Against all odds, over many years Vidyaben continued her efforts with all the relevant authorities to finally get official recognition of the school till class X. For many years, Vidyaben continues to be the Chairperson of Sardar Patel Vidyaniketan Managing Committee providing direction for the smooth running and achieving high level performance of the school.

Vidyaben set up a school in 1970 at a Jehangirpuri slum in North Delhi. For several years, she was also a member of the Managing Committees of Modern School Barakhamba Road and Vasant Vihar, and of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Vidyaben at the school she set up at a Jehangirpuri slum in Delhi
Vidyaben at the school she set up at a Jehangirpuri slum in Delhi

On becoming President of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) in 1975, Vidyaben was instrumental in starting a large number of projects for slum children and women. These projects include home for destitute children, home for abandoned children, hostels for working women, and the rehabilitation centre for the mentally challenged. In 1977 as President of NDMC, she initiated the concept of Navyug Schools  that has proved a landmark in the educational field for gifted children from the economically weaker sections of society.

Vidyaben distributing prizes to children at an NDMC school function
Vidyaben distributing prizes to children at an NDMC school function
 

Women's Welfare

Vidyaben’s involvement with women’s issues dates back to her college days, where she set up the first craft centre for underprivileged women in Saurashtra. While studying in Rajkot and Bhavnagar, she was already an active social worker. In Bhavnagar she was staying in a women's hostel and had taken on the task of looking after the welfare of young girls who came from East Africa to study in India. She would take care of them when they were ill, and provided them extra food as meals in the hostel were meagre. In Rajkot in the 1950s she had started an organisation called Refugee Women's Centre (Mahila Mandal) in Sadar for the welfare of refugee women and girls who were displaced or rendered homeless following Partition of India.

The Government of India appointed her as the Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB) in 1995 for three years, during which time she initiated many path-breaking programmes to revive this premier institution to its old glory. A brainchild of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Durgabai Deshmukh, CSWB was set up by an Act of Indian Parliament in August 1953. During her tenure, Vidyaben expanded the programmes of Family Counselling Centres (FCC), Working Women’s Hostels (WWH), Vocational Training Programmes and Creches. She set targets of providing support for at least one FCC and one WWH per district in the country. In 1995, as a member of the official Indian delegation, she attended the Fourth World Conference on Women held at Beijing, China. She also represented India at the 42nd Meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women held in New York in 1998.

President of NDMC Vidyaben with children at a function in a village near Delhi
President of NDMC Vidyaben with children at a Delhi village function

National Family Planning Programme

While being immensely compassionate and wanting justice for her fellow beings, Vidyaben's style of working has also always been highly professional. In the mid 1970s, Vidyaben did some sterling work helping men and women who had large families and who wanted to plan their family. The work carried out by Vidyaben was within a National Programme and her work was of the kind which any society would be proud of, as many helpless men and women either did not know how to plan a family or were shy to raise the issue by themselves and Vidyaben was personally there providing solutions and support aided by a technical team of experts. By the 1970s, Vidyaben had had more than thirty years of social work experience with families. She had created and managed numerous women's organisations. She had been a Magistrate in the Juvenile Courts for eight years and had engaged with men and women struggling to raise children in large and deprived families.

Quality of life and justice for the poor were uppermost in her heart and mind when she took up the work for the National Programme for family planning. During the meetings she had with men and women wanting to plan a family or making people aware of the benefits and procedures of planning a family, she always had a qualified health worker accompanying her to explain to people the health consequences of family planning. At one point a commission called the Shah Commission was set up to inquire into, among other things, the functioning of this highly sensitive but later politicised Family Planning programme. The Shah Commission fully exonerated Vidyaben of baseless accusations levelled against her by some negatively motivated vested interests. The people she helped were from large and underprivileged families and in most cases it was men who opted to undergo family planning procedures. Once her team had become known, it was not surprising that many people came to her of their own accord asking for solutions to problems they faced with the prospect of having too large a family that they could not afford to raise and for whom they would not be able to provide a good quality life. Even in the years following the family planning programme, men and women came to Vidyaben to thank her for making their lives better. Today the impact of family planning efforts made in that era can be seen clearly, as the population growth rate saw its first reduction in 1977 soon after various initiatives were implemented in the National Family Planning programme. The population growth rate has been steadily declining since, from being at its peak at 2.3% in 1977 to 1.3% in 2012; and birth rate from being 5 per woman in 1977 to being 2.5 per woman in 2012.[5]

Elderly Care

Vidyaben has been working actively in city wide and locality level initiatives for the care of the elderly. Since the 1990s, she continues to be an active President of the Senior Citizens Service Forum which is a member of the State Council for Senior Citizens as well as a member of the National Council for Older Persons set up by the Indian Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. Among other activities, the Senior Citizens Service Forum runs a day care centre for senior citizens and conducts adult education classes for women. In 2007 Vidyaben was invited to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment to examine the “Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill 2007”. On a daily basis a stream of elderly men and women continue to come to her to ask for solutions to their problems with their children or their homes or support structures or with infrastructure facilities providing essential amenities. Vidyaben is seen to welcome them into her home with a smile and giving them practical solutions as well as comfort through words and generous deeds.

Work with Senior Leaders and Statesmen

Vidyaben worked extensively with a number of leaders and statesmen in India and remained in close contact with them over the decades influencing government policies and programmes in the country.

Vidyaben being awarded by Jamsaheb of Jamnagar 1950
Vidyaben with Jamsaheb of Jamnagar, 1950
   
Vidyaben with Pandit Nehru, 1960
Vidyaben with Lal Bahadur Shastri PM 1965
   
Radhakrishnan President of India 1963
Radhakrishnan President of India 1963
   
   
Vidyaben with Morarji Desai Prime Minister 1977
and Governor Jaisukh Lal Hathi
Vidyaben with Shri Y B Chavan
Defense Minister, 1965
idyaben with Shri Gulzari Lal Nanda
Prime Minister 1966
   
Babu Jagjivanram Umashanker Dikshit Brahmanand Reddy 1974
Vidyaben with Babu Jagjivan Ram, Umashanker Dikshit, Brahmanand Reddy
   
   
Vidyaben in 1989 with Romesh Bhandari
Vidyaben in 1989 with Romesh Bhandari Lieutenant Governor Delhi and Nandini Satpathy (Odisha CM 1976)
   
   
Shri K R Narayanan Vice President of India
A National Award for distinguished social service presented by Shri K R Narayanan, Vice President of India, 1994