socialworkers

Social workers part 3

Social workers part 3

1Medha Patkar

Medha Patkar (née Khanolkar; born 1 December 1954) is a politician and activist working on certain political and social issues raised by tribals, dalits, farmers, labourers and women facing injustice in India. She is an alumnus of TISS, a premier institute of social science research in India.

Patkar is the founder member of the movement called Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in three states: Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. NBA has been engaged in a struggle for justice for the people affected by the dam projects related to the Sardar Sarovar dam project, especially those whose homes will be submerged but have not yet been rehabilitated.[citation needed] She is also one of the founders of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), an alliance of hundreds of progressive people's organizations.[3] In addition to the above, Patkar was a commissioner on the World Commission on Dams, which did thorough research on the environmental, social, political and economic aspects and impacts of the development of large dams globally and their alternatives.[4] She was the national co-ordinator and then convenor of National Alliance of People's Movements for many years and now continues to be an advisor to NAPM. Under the banner of NAPM, she has participated in and supported various mass struggles across India against inequity, non-sustainability, displacement, and injustice in the name of development. Her work challenges Casteism, Communalism, and all forms of discrimination.[citation needed] She has been a part of numerous teams and panels that work on initiating and formulating various national policies and enactments including those related to land acquisition, unorganized sector workers, hawkers, slum-dwellers and forest-dweller Adivasis. NAPM filed several public interest litigations including those against Adarsh society, Lavasa Megacity, Hiranandani(Powai) and as well as other builders.

In 2000, Medha Patkar was included in the 100 heroes of the 20th century by Time.[5] However, noted Economist Swaminathan has criticized Medha Patkar in hindsight, saying she was wrong on the Narmada project. Prime Minister Modi said that Medha Patkar and her “urban Naxal” friends had opposed and delayed the Narmada project that had greatly benefited Gujarat.”[6] Expansion of the project in subsequent years has further brought further benefits from the dam, with irrigation water now available throughout the year to farmers across the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.

Medha Patkar was born as Medha Khanolkar on 1 December 1954 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, the daughter of Vasant Khanolkar, a freedom fighter, and labour union leader,[8] and his wife Indumati Khanolkar, a gazetted officer in the Post and Telegraphs Department.[9] She has one brother, Mahesh Khanolkar, an architect.

Medha Khanolkar earned an MA in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She was married for seven years (hence her surname Patkar) but the marriage ended in divorce.

Medha Patkar worked with voluntary organizations in Mumbai's slums for 5 years and tribal districts of North-East districts of Gujarat for three years. She worked as a member of the faculty at Tata Institute of Social Sciences but left her position to take up the fieldwork. She was a Ph.D. scholar at TISS, studying Economics development and its impact on traditional societies. After working up to M.Phil. level she left her unfinished Ph.D. when she became immersed in her work with the tribal and peasant communities in the Narmada valley spread over three states.

Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is a social movement protesting against the dam on river Narmada which began in 1985 consisting of Adivasis, farmers, fish workers, labourers, and others in the Narmada valley along with the intellectuals including environmentalists, human rights activists, Scientists, academicians, artists who stand for just and sustainable development. Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat is one of the biggest dams on Narmada where the non-violent people's struggle has questioned social and environmental costs, undemocratic planning, and unjust distribution of benefits. The struggle is still on in the Sardar Sarovar affected areas and also other large and medium dams on Narmada and its tributaries. It has led to thousands of project-affected families receiving land-based rehabilitation and continues to fight against submergence and displacement without rehabilitation of more than 40,000 families residing in these submergence areas of Sardar Sarovar to date. Few of the claims and critique on economic, social, and environmental aspects of the Sardar Sarovar and Narmada valley development project stand vindicated today. Patkar has also questioned the wisdom of the currently popular developmental strategy of linking rivers in India as a means to address issues of water shortage.[10]

NBA has been running JEEVANSHALAS- schools of life, since 1992 with about 5,000 students have passed out and many graduated. Tens of them are under training in athletics and some have won many awards.[citation needed] NBA also successfully established and managed two micro-hydro projects which got submerged due to the SS dam. It has been working in many sectors over the last 30 years including health, employment guarantee, Right to Food and PDS, rehabilitation, and environment protection.[citation needed]

Critics argue that dam's benefits include provision of drinking water, power generation and irrigation facilities. However, it is believed that the campaign, led by the NBA activists, has held up the project's completion, and NBA supporters have attacked on local people who accepted compensation for moving.[11] Others have argued that the Narmada Dam protesters are little more than environmental extremists, who use pseudoscientific agitprop to scuttle the development of the region and that the dam will provide agricultural benefits to millions of poor in India.[12] There had also been instances of the NBA activists turning violent and attacking rehabilitation officer from Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA), which caused damage to the contractor's machinery.[13]

The NBA has been accused of lying under oath in court about land ownership in areas affected by the dam.[14] The Supreme Court has mulled perjury charges against the group.

It is a struggle for housing rights in Mumbai, started in 2005, and continues to fight for the rights of slum-dwellers and those created by the builders in various rehabilitation and re-development projects. It all began when the government of Maharashtra demolished 75,000 houses of the poor in 2005, against its promises before the election. Strong people's movement was founded by Medha Patkar and others when she gave the slogan in a large public meeting at Azaad Maidaan Mumbai. It was through mass action that the communities were rebuilt on the same sites and continued to assert and attain their right to shelter water, electricity, sanitation, and livelihood. As members of working-class GBGBA respect the slum-dwellers for contribution to the life of the city and involve them inequitable and inclusive planning for urban development.

2Freda Bedi

Freda Bedi (born Freda Marie Houlston; 5 February 1911 – 26 March 1977), also known as Sister Palmo or Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo, was an English-Indian social worker, writer, Indian nationalist and Buddhist nun.[2] She was jailed in British India as a supporter of Indian nationalism and was the first Western woman to take full ordination in Tibetan Buddhism.

Freda Marie Houlston was born in a flat above her father's jewellery and watch repair business in Monk Street in Derby.[4] When she was still a baby, the family moved to Littleover, a suburb of Derby.

Freda's father served in the First World War and was enrolled in the Machine Guns Corps. He was killed in northern France on 14 April 1918. Her mother, Nellie, remarried in 1920, to Frank Norman Swan. Freda studied at Hargrave House and then at Parkfields Cedars School, both in Derby. She also spent several months studying at a school in Rheims in northern France.[5] She succeeded in gaining admission to St Hugh's College, Oxford to study French, being awarded an Exhibition or minor scholarship

At Oxford, Freda Houlston changed her subject from French to Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). She met her husband Baba Pyare Lal "BPL" Bedi, an Indian from Lahore, on her PPE course. He was a Sikh whose family traced back to Guru Nanak Dev Ji.[citation needed] Romance blossomed and they married at Oxford Registry Office in June 1933,[2] in spite of the reservations of her family and disciplinary action by her college.

Whilst at Oxford Freda became involved in politics. She attended meetings of the Oxford Majlis, where nationalist-minded Indian students gathered, as well as of the communist October Club and the Labour Club. This was another bond with BPL Bedi, who became a keen communist and opponent of Empire.[7] The couple together edited four books on India's struggle for Independence.[1] At St Hugh's her closest friends included Barbara Castle,[4] later a prominent Labour cabinet minister, and the broadcaster Olive Shapley. All three women graduated with a third-class degree; Freda's husband got a fourth-class degree.

After a year in Berlin where B.P.L. Bedi was studying - and where their first child, Ranga, was born - Freda, her husband and baby son sailed to India in 1934. She worked as a journalist and taught English at a women's college in Lahore, and with her husband published a high quality quarterly review "Contemporary India". They also later published a weekly political paper, "Monday Morning".[9] Freda regularly contributed articles to Lahore's main nationalist daily, The Tribune.[1] Both she and her husband were leftists and campaigning nationalists active in India's independence movement. The couple's second child, Tilak, died when less than a year old. The family lived in an encampment of huts, without power or running water, outside Model Town in Lahore.[9]

"Baba" Bedi spent about fifteen months in an internment camp at Deoli in the early stages of World War Two because as a communist he was seeking to disrupt recruitment of Punjabis into the British Indian army. Freda herself was jailed for three months in 1941 as a satyagrahi after deliberately defying the wartime regulations as part of a civil disobedience campaign spearheaded by Mohandas K. Gandhi[10] After independence in 1947, Bedi and her family moved to Kashmir,[4] where husband and wife were influential supporters of Sheikh Abdullah, the left-wing Kashmiri nationalist leader. She joined a women's militia for a while and taught English at a newly established women's college in Srinagar in Kashmir. Later in Delhi, she became editor of the magazine "Social Welfare" of the Ministry of Welfare and also received Indian citizenship.[1][2]

Freda Bedi briefly served as a member of the United Nations Social Services Planning Commission to Burma, during which she was first exposed to Buddhism, which quickly became the defining aspect of her life. In Rangoon she learned vipassana from Mahasi Sayadaw, and Sayadaw U Titthila.

In Delhi, she became a prominent Buddhist and in 1956, when the 14th Dalai Lama made his first visit to India, she showed him around Buddhist shrines in Delhi.[13]

In 1959, when the Dalai Lama arrived in India after an arduous trek across the Himalayas followed by thousands of his Tibetan devotees, she was asked by India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to help them and spent time improving facilities for refugees at camps in Assam and West Bengal. She became an observant Tibetan Buddhist and she followed the guidance of the 16th Karmapa of the Kagyu School. She worked, with the support of the Dalai Lama, to establish the Young Lamas Home School.[14] Bedi initially set up the Young Lama's School in Delhi but after a short period it was moved to Dalhousie. The school trained young Tibetan lamas and monks in languages and social sciences as well as religion, to equip the coming generation of Tibetan spiritual leaders for life in exile. A number of Bedi's pupils became well-known teachers, including Chogyam Trungpa,[15] Thubten Zopa Rinpoche,[16] Akong Rinpoche, Tulku Pema Tenzin, Kathak Tulku, Gelek Rimpoche, Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, and the sons of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima and Chokling of Tsikey[17]). In 1963, with Lama Karma Thinley Rinpoche and under the guidance of the Karmapa, she founded the Karma Drubgyu Thargay Ling nunnery for Tibetan women, now located in Tilokpur, Kangra Valley.

Freda Marie Houlston Bedi, Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, (editors) India analysed, three volumes published by Victor Gollancz, 1933-4

Freda Marie Houlston Bedi, Behind the Mud Walls, Lahore: Unity Publishers, 1943

Freda Bedi, Bengal Lamenting, Lahore: Lion, 1944

Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, Freda Marie (Houlston) Bedi, Sheikh Abdullah: his life and ideals, pamphlet, c1949

Ein Rosenkranz von Morgengebeten : nach der Tradition des Mahayana – Buddhismus / aus dem Tibetischen ins Englische übers. von Karma Khechog Palmo. Deutsche Wiedergabe von Advayavajra. – Almora, Indien : Kasar-Devi-Ashram-Publication, 1971. – VI, 49 S.

Freda Bedi, Anna Bhushan (illustrator), Rhymes for Ranga, Random House, India, 2010, ISBN 81-8400-036-7

3Abala Bose

Abala, Lady Bose (8 August 1865 – 25 April 1951) was an Indian social worker and feminist. She was known for her efforts in women's education and her contribution towards helping widows.

In the 1880s, Abala was denied admission to Calcutta Medical College as female students were not yet accepted in the college. She went to Madras (now Chennai) in 1882 on Bengal government scholarship to study medicine but had to give up because of ill health. In 1887, she married scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose. She accompanied her husband in several travels abroad in later years.[2]

Apart from working as an educator, Bose was an early feminist. Writing in English magazine Modern Review, she argued that women should get a better education, "not because we may make better matches for our girls ... not even that the services of the daughter-in-law may be more valuable in the home of her adoption, but because a woman like a man is first of all a mind, and only in the second place physical and a body."[3]

Kamini Roy, who studied with her in Bethune School, picked up feminism from her. Upon her husband's knighthood in 1916, she became Lady Bose.

Lady Bose served as Secretary of Brahmo Balika Shikshalaya from 1910 to 1936. She died on 25 April 1951, aged 87.

Born Abala Das in 1865; died in 1951; daughter of Durgahohan Das (founder of the Sadharan Brahma Samaj and Brahmamoijee); attended Calcutta University; studied medicine in Madras; married physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, in 1887.

When Abala Bose was five, her family was ostracized by their community for advocating the remarriage of widows. Five years later, in 1875, her mother died. Her father Durgahohan Das was a role model in his campaign for higher education for young women; he established the Bethune Collegiate School for Girls, where Abala and her sister Sarla received their education. The sisters went on to become two of the first women to attend Calcutta University, after which Abala studied medicine in Madras. Following her marriage to the renowned physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1887, Abala Bose devoted herself to furthering educational opportunities for women in her country.

During the three decades between 1896 and 1933, Bose traveled to Europe a number of times, visiting schools and bringing the newest educational approaches and methods back to India. Through her appointment as secretary of the Brahmo Balika Shikshalaya (School for Girls), she became an educational innovator, broadening the curriculum to include self-defense and introducing new methods such as the Maria Montessori system. In 1919, she launched the Nari Shiksha Samiti to help spread education to women throughout the country. She later established the Sister Nivedita Adult Education Fund.

But Bose's concerns for the women of India went further than education, and in 1925 she established a home for widows. In 1935, she opened the Women's Industrial Co-operative Home in Calcutta, which later became a relief and rehabilitation center for women from Bangladesh. Abala Bose died in 1951, shortly after establishing the Sadhuna Ashram in Calcutta.

It is said behind every successful man there is a woman. Who was behind Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, who could have won a Nobel Prize for his scientific inventions had he not be born in British India? Who inspired him to carry on with his scientific work? His wife, Abala Bose is considered to be the greatest encouragement behind his success story. But Abala Bose is not just remembered as Jagadish Bose’s wife, rather she was a successful woman in her own right and one of the greatest social reformers, feminists and educationists of Bengal.

Being daughter of the erstwhile Brahmo leader, Durgamohan Das, who himself was one of the most liberated visionary of those times, she imbibed the best Brahmo traditions while studying in Bethune Girls’ School and then in Bethune College. She and her sister Sarala Ray inherited the fortitude and the generous nature of their mother. Abala Bose decided to take up medicine as a career and follow the footsteps of Kadambini Ganguly, the first Bengali woman to qualify to practice western medicine in India. She started her studies in Madras, but left her medical studies when the marriage proposal from Jagadish Chandra Bose came in.

Home / Opinion /Lady Abala Bose – inspiration behind Jagadish Bose’s success

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8 August, 2019 20:17:16

It is said behind every successful man there is a woman. Who was behind Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, who could have won a Nobel Prize for his scientific inventions had he not be born in British India? Who inspired him to carry on with his scientific work? His wife, Abala Bose is considered to be the greatest encouragement behind his success story. But Abala Bose is not just remembered as Jagadish Bose’s wife, rather she was a successful woman in her own right and one of the greatest social reformers, feminists and educationists of Bengal.

Being daughter of the erstwhile Brahmo leader, Durgamohan Das, who himself was one of the most liberated visionary of those times, she imbibed the best Brahmo traditions while studying in Bethune Girls’ School and then in Bethune College. She and her sister Sarala Ray inherited the fortitude and the generous nature of their mother. Abala Bose decided to take up medicine as a career and follow the footsteps of Kadambini Ganguly, the first Bengali woman to qualify to practice western medicine in India. She started her studies in Madras, but left her medical studies when the marriage proposal from Jagadish Chandra Bose came in.

Also ReadHOW KADAMBINI FOUGHT PATRIARCHY AND BECAME A DOCTOR IN BRITISH INDIA

However, she never ceased to champion the cause of women education and educational reforms. From Europe she brought in the Montessori system of education. She started Brahmo Girls School and in 1919, she brought together eminent personalities like Chittaranjan Das, Jadumati Mukherjee (mother of Sir Rajen Mukherjee), Prafulla Chandra Ray, social reformer Priyambada Bannerjee, Sir (Dr) Nilratan Sircar and others to form Nari Shiksha Samiti, for the spread of women’s education and providing financial assistance to widows. The organisation also strove to ensure female representation in educational bodies and to press for a gender-sensitive syllabus.

Abala Bose was responsible, single-handedly or jointly, for the establishment of educational institutions for women. Muralidhar Girls’ College was formed jointly by Lady Bose (she had acquired the title of ‘Lady’ upon her husband's knighthood in 1916) and Krishnaprasad Basak. The same two people also founded Beltala Girls’ School in Bhowanipore area. During her lifetime, through the Nari Siksha Samiti, Lady Bose set up about 88 primary schools and 14 adult education centres in the British province of Bengal.

After independence, the efforts of Lady Bose shifted towards the education and rehabilitation of displaced and economically distressed girls and adult women, irrespective of their marital status. This is the principle on which inmates of the Bani Bhavan are now recruited. The Boses were close friends with Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita. Swamiji was a regular visitor to the Bose household and the Boses also regularly visited him. Later they became close to Sister Nivedita, who championed Jagadish Bose, as Indian scientists often were stifled by British high-handedness.

4Prakash Amte

Prakash Baba Amte is a social worker from Maharashtra, India. Amte and his wife, Mandakini Amte, were awarded the Magsaysay Award for 'Community Leadership'[1] in 2008 for their philanthropic work[2] in the form of the Lok Biradari Prakalp amongst the Madia Gonds in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra and the neighbouring states of Telangana and Madhya Pradesh. In November 2019 he was awarded with ICMR Lifetime Achievement Award by Bill Gates.

Prakash Amte is the second son[2] of Magsaysay awardee Baba Amte. He obtained a medical degree from Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur,[2] and he met his wife Mandakini during their post graduation studies at Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur.[2] Prakash and Mandakini joined Baba Amte and helped her father and others overcome the taboo and fear of leprosy.

In 1973, Amte moved to Hemalkasa to start the Lok Biradari Prakalp,[2] a project for the development of tribal people, most of whom were the Madia Gond in the forests of Gadchiroli district.[4] He lived and worked there for almost twenty years performing emergency surgical procedures without electricity. The project transformed into a hospital, Lok Biradari Prakalp Davakhana, a residential school, Lok Biradari Prakalp Ashram Shala, and an orphanage for injured wild animals, the Amte's Animal Park.[5] The project provides health care to about 40,000 individuals annually. The Lok Biradari Prakalp Ashram School has over 600 students, residents and day scholars.[6] Work of Amte's for Gond tribals and their philanthropic work in the form of the Lok Biradari Prakalp amongst the Madia Gonds in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra and the neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh also won them recognition.[2] Dr Prakash and his family also run a large animal conservation facility in Hemalkasa in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra where rare, protected, and endangered animals are cared and have freedom to roam.[2] The family's legacy in philanthropy and animal conservation is now carried over by their sons Digant and Aniket and their respective families who are helping their parents now

Amte has published two autobiographies, Prakashvata (Pathways to Light), originally written in Marathi and now translated into English, Gujarati and Kannada, Sanskrit, Hindi and Raanmitra (Jungle Friends).

The biographical film Dr Prakash Baba Amte : The Real Hero starring Nana Patekar as Prakash Amte and Sonali Kulkarni as Mandakini Amte[2] was released on 10 October 2014.[15] The film has been released in three languages, Hindi, Marathi and English

It all began in the 70’s when the doctor duo during a stroll in the Dandarayana forest came across some tribal people carrying a dead monkey with its baby still suckling at her breast. Moved by the sight they bought the baby monkey from the tribes people in exchange for rice and clothes into their home at Hemalkasa. The inclusion of the baby monkey into their family set the ball rolling for the establishment of ‘Animal Ark’ which later on became a home to several such animal orphans. Many animals whose parents were killed for food by the tribal people followed the red faced baby monkey and they arrived in all types.

Since the last forty years the orphanage has warmly welcomed several jackals, jungle cats, leopards, deer, snakes, giant squirrels, Indian pythons, sloth bears, hyenas, crocodiles, birds and owls into its fold. There was a time when the number of animals living as family among the Amte clan and the villagers totaled to 300. It was only later that cages were erected to house the animals in the orphanage as a regulatory procedure. The cages have in no way hindered the ease and freedom of the animals nor the unbound love showered by the Amte family on them.

Dr Prakash Baba Amte is the son of the legendary social worker Baba Amte whose work for the upliftment of the leprosy afflicted has won him many accolades. On the completion of his doctor’s degree, Dr Prakash Amte began studying for his MS. But destiny had something else in store for him. While on a picnic to Hemalkasa with his father, Dr Prakash Amte was aghast on seeing the state of the tribal people living in that region. Dropping his studies for the MS degree, Dr Prakash Baba Amte decided to change their lives and moved to Hemalaksa along with his wife, Dr Mandakini Amte. Hemalkasa was a small community of tribal people, with no power and transport facilities and totally cut out from the rest of the world. Notwithstanding the mountain of hardships that came their way, this doctor couple uplifted the lives of the Madia-Gond tribal community to an unthought-of level. The tribal community had no access to basic necessities, were unaware of clothing their bodies, never knew what medical care was and followed hunting as the sole means of sustenance. They lived almost like savages. The selfless work of this couple brought them into the mainstream and in the process several engineers, doctors and teachers were nurtured by the duo. In the initial days, the doctor duo began treating the tribes people in a makeshift hospital, taught the kids beneath a tree and helped to reduce the day-to-day problems of the tribal people in the area. Their efforts for development of the region has borne rich fruits today with the establishment of a hospital fitted with modern facilities, a residential school reaching out to hundreds of tribal children and the development of the ‘Animal Ark’.

Dr Prakash Amte and his wife devoted their entire life for the betterment of the tribal people and local wildlife of the Gadchiroli region. They worked hard to bring awareness among the tribes people of the region, teaching them agricultural techniques and considerably reducing their dependence on hunting for survival. Absence of power did not deter them from performing several emergency surgical procedures and eventually they got a hospital fitted with modern facilities. Though the couple were not trained to be veterinarians; they went beyond the ordinary and created the ‘Animal Ark’ within their courtyard, providing a safe haven to deserted and injured animals.

5Aruna Roy

Aruna Roy (née Jayaram, born 6 June 1946) is an Indian social activist, professor, union organiser and former civil servant. She is the president of the National Federation of Indian Women and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.

for Women. Her admission was unexpected for the college faculty as she qualified at an age earlier than usual. Aruna majored in English Literature and then immediately went for a master's degree in 1965. She completed her post-graduation at the University of Delhi.[7]

Following her education, she did not want to become a homemaker like most women during that time, which she considered to be a "limbo of passivity" but most fields were male dominated and her options were limited to journalism and teaching.[7] For a short period of time, she became a professor of English Literature at her alma mater.[8] In 1967, at the age of 21, she gave the difficult examinations for the Indian Administrative Service, which at the time had a selection rate of less than 0.1% and a marginal number of successful women candidates.[6] Aruna was able to get selected on her first attempt at the examinations and was one of only 10 women to qualify in that year.[3][6] She was influenced by feminism and considered joining the male dominated civil services in her father's footsteps to be a feminist choice. Mahatma Gandhi also had a significant influence on her family and their ethics, and she incorporated his philosophy in her way of thinking along with the philosophy of M. N. Roy.[Notes 4][6] She was sent to the National Academy of Administration for a year's course followed by a year of supervised training called probation. Her batch had 100 successful candidates and the course included an intensive study of economics, law, languages and basic administration. It also included horse riding and guidelines on courtesies and etiquette from the British period. She along with other students in her batch had rebelled against various aspects of the curriculum and were able to introduce some reforms which were implemented for the batch after theirs.

Aruna was a part of the Union Territories cadre but was sent to Tamil Nadu for her probationary period as she knew the Tamil language. Her first assignment was that of an assistant to the supervising administrator (known as District Collector) of Tiruchi district. She opted for and was granted a transfer to Vellore district (at the time known as North Arcot) after her supervisor in Tiruchi refused to mentor her. T. V. Venkataram was the Collector in Vellore and he made a lasting impact on Aruna and others assigned as assistants to him. They were provided with independent charges under supervision which was unconventional in the system.[7][9] Aruna married a batch mate of hers from University of Delhi, Sanjit Roy in 1970.[3][5] He belonged to a Bengali family and had involved himself in social work since his time in college.[5] She changed her name to Aruna Roy (née Jayaram) after marriage. By the time of her marriage, Roy was a Sub-Collector in the Union Territory of Pondicherry and after marriage, she was granted a transfer to the Union Territory of Delhi as she had married a person who lived in that region.[7][9]

Roy's first assignment in Delhi was that of a Sub-Divisional Magistrate. She oversaw six police jurisdictions and besides her regular duties, had to manage student protests and election duty. Over the following period, she became the Deputy Secretary for finance and in 1973, was promoted to the position of Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. She was disillusioned with the civil services by this time.[7] Aruna had joined the services as she saw it as a means of working for social justice within a constitutional framework, with the conviction that the provisions of the Indian Constitution, if implemented, was the correct standards for providing decent and equitable treatment to citizens. She was aware before joining that there was corruption in the system but thought that it was possible to enact reform from within. In contrast, after around 7 years within the system, she came to see the organisation as a hidebound institution where feudal and colonial values were nurt ured.