After the much-awaited inauguration of the new blocks by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, the students of Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR) are only waiting to move in as soon as the new semester sets in. The new blocks, namely, the Dr. Bharat Ram Academic Complex and the Aung San Suu Kyi Centre for Peace are expected to provide state of the art infrastructure to the students as well as solve the space crunch problem for both academic and non-academic purposes. Paucity of space had become a major concern for most Delhi University colleges after the expansion of OBC seats in 2009. With the introduction of the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) and the number of active batches soon to be increased from three to four, this shortage is only expected to become worse.
The Centre for Peace has been constructed as an extension of the existing main building and has been envisioned as a centre for research and learning. A part of the centre is also to be used by the Department of Psychology. The Centre has been christened after the college’s most notable alumnus, Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The Dr. Bharat Ram Academic Block is an all new three-storey building which boasts of multiple lecture rooms and seminar rooms, an amphitheatre and an exhibition gallery along with a dedicated section to suit the technical requirements of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. Dr. Bharat Ram, after whom the block has been named, was an industrialist and educationist, the son of the college’s founder, Sir Shri Ram.
The interconnected and expandable lecture rooms of the new block, 16 in number, can accommodate 25 to 100 students depending upon the requirement. The seminar rooms too have the capacity to seat a hundred. The Manju Bharat Ram Conference Hall, named after the late educationist and Padma Shri awardee, is the biggest of such rooms. As of now, the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of Elementary Education have been allotted rooms in the block. However, the final allocation will take place only by the end of the academic year. Along with the amphitheatre and the exhibition gallery, another new feature is the Multipurpose Room that is expected to be at the students’ disposition for extra-curricular activities.
A glass panel on the ground floor acknowledges the contribution of the people and the organizations that helped with the college meet the financial expenditure. The construction of the blocks has been funded in part by the university and in a big way by the alumni, faculty and college associations. The exhibition gallery showcases the journey of LSR through the years, highlighting significant events and turn points while at the same time stressing upon the principles that the college seeks to uphold. And the inner walls reiterate what the college stands for- Leadership with Social Responsibility, an alternative explanation of the acronym LSR, being one of them. With all that has gone into their making, these new blocks are set to carry forward the legacy of the red walls.
Image Credit: Kanchi Malhotra
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