The file was on the officer’s desk, and the young woman was waiting for it to be accepted.
There was nothing unusual about the papers inside. Her qualifications were there. She had completed the training required to become a teacher and had reached the point where she could finally apply for a government teaching position. After everything she had already gone through, this should have been another step in a long journey.
But the file was not moving.
The officer looked at the application, and the fact that she was totally blind became the central issue. We waited for the conversation to move towards her qualifications, but instead the concern was whether a totally blind person could actually teach. Her education was there, her training was there, yet her blindness had become a reason to stop the process before it had even begun.
We tried to explain that she was not asking to be given a job simply because she was blind. She was asking for her application to be accepted and her qualifications to be considered. She had already done the studying. She had already completed the training. She only wanted the opportunity to compete.
But the file remained stuck.
That was when we realised that simply arguing the matter ourselves was not going to be enough. Three or four journalists who covered education were contacted and asked to speak with the concerned officer and raise the issue. A few other friends were also approached and requested to use their own connections to push the matter from different directions. The pressure gradually began to work. Eventually, her file was accepted, the process moved forward, and she got the government teaching job.
It was not the first time she had faced a barrier because of her blindness.
We had first met her through a newspaper advertisement for Antardrishti. She was a young blind woman who wanted to study and become a teacher, but even getting admission to the Basic Training Certificate (BTC) course had become difficult. Her blindness had already become an obstacle before she had acquired the qualification that would later be questioned.
She remained closely associated with us after that first contact. We helped her in different ways through her studies and stayed connected as she worked towards becoming a teacher. The BTC was an important step in that journey, and completing it should have brought her closer to the career she had chosen. Instead, when the time came to apply for a government teaching position, another barrier appeared.
This time, she had to fight simply to have her application accepted.
Eventually, she got the job. It was significant not because Antardrishti had secured a job for her, but because someone who had been stopped at the door was finally allowed to enter the same process as everyone else.
There was, however, another part of the story that came back to us later.
While she was studying, her father had approached us for financial help. He explained that the family was poor and that supporting her education was difficult. We did not provide financial assistance. That was a conscious policy at Antardrishti. We wanted to help people in ways that could strengthen their own journey, but we did not want our work to become a source of personal financial support. We continued to help his daughter in other ways.
After she got the government job, her father came to meet us again. He was grateful and thanked us for what we had done for his daughter. There was genuine happiness in the meeting. His daughter had worked hard, and after all the difficulties, she had finally got the opportunity she had been working towards.
Then the conversation turned to his other daughter.
She was sighted and also wanted a government job. Her father wanted to know whether our connections could help her get one. This time, he was willing to pay.
He looked at us, waiting for an answer. We sat there looking back at him. The same man who had once come to us saying that the family did not have enough money to support his blind daughter’s education was now prepared to spend money if it could help his sighted daughter secure a government job.
The contrast sat between us, unspoken.
His blind daughter had needed someone to persuade the system to accept that she was capable of doing the job. His sighted daughter, in his thinking, needed someone who could help her get the job.
The contrast said enough.
Then there was another kind of price that appeared around competitive examinations.
The phone rang one day. The call was about a scribe.
After understanding which examination the candidate needed to take and what kind of assistance was required, the conversation seemed straightforward. A scribe would read the questions and write the answers dictated by the candidate. Then came an unexpected condition. The candidate wanted the scribe to be very well educated and capable of clearing the examination themselves. For such a person, the candidate was willing to pay a substantial amount as scribe fees.
It was not simply a request for someone who could read and write. The candidate wanted someone they trusted academically, someone they believed could follow the examination properly and give them the best possible chance of clearing it. After spending years preparing for an examination, the fear of losing the opportunity because of an unsuitable scribe could make a candidate willing to pay heavily.
At Antardrishti, we refused to provide such paid scribes.
It was not because we did not understand how important a good scribe could be. We understood how much could depend on the person sitting beside a candidate during those few hours. But we did not want to become part of an arrangement in which a blind candidate had to pay heavily simply to obtain the assistance needed to demonstrate what they already knew.
By then, the story had become larger than one young woman’s government appointment. For her, there had been barriers at several stages: getting admission to the BTC course, completing her qualification and finally getting an education department officer to accept an application that she was already qualified to make.
For other blind candidates, there could be another price—the money they were willing to pay for a scribe they believed could make the difference between passing and failing an examination.
None of these prices appeared in the job advertisement.
The young woman eventually became a government teacher. Her blindness had not changed. Her qualification had not changed. What changed was that the system finally allowed her qualification to be considered.
And perhaps that is what makes the title uncomfortable.
The price of a job should be the qualification and the ability to do it. It should never be the effort required to convince someone that a blind person is capable of doing it.