It was Mazumdar’s seminal ideas that convinced administrative authorities as wellas fellow academics that ‘women’s studies’ deserved to be worked on as anautonomous discipline. And to her goes the credit for the number of institutes—suchas the Centre for Women’s Development Studies she founded—engaged in research onthe subject.
As member-secretary of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, she practicallysingle-handedly wrote its report—Towards Equality—which became atouchstone for future generations of women activists and scholars.A professor of PoliticalScience for 16 years, ‘Bina-di’ is an institution not only among her studentswho still remember her "tremendous charisma"—Janata Dal leader Jaipal Reddyand former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey are two—but also in the academic world atlarge.