Faced discrimination in college for being a girl: UPSC topper Ira Singhal

Singhal (30), who has both engineering and management degrees, gave up corporate career to get into the bureaucracy. She is a computer engineering graduate from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology and pursued her MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, DU.

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Speaking about her college life, Singhal said: “Engineering (college) was one place where I did face discrimination, and it went on to MBA as well. But that was not a discrimination against being physically different. It involved being a girl, flat and simple. People in my college thought since we were women, we cannot hold the highest of posts, and (they thought) that had to go to the men. That was the discrimination that I had to fight very hard to get over. I think somewhere down the line, we women start believing that we are lesser than the men… But, I’m not somebody who is OK with being placed at any level, where I don’t belong. So, I personally think that we all deserve equality, no matter who you are.”

With 62 per cent locomotor disability, Ira had cleared the UPSC exam in 2010 as well and was allotted the Indian Revenue Service, but she was stopped from joining because authorities cited her “inability to push, pull and lift’’. She moved the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) which ruled in her favour and she was inducted as assistant commissioner in the Customs and Central Excise Service.

Recounting her legal battle, she said: “I again found out that with people like me who are disabled, there is another level of discrimination. All the services in the government have specific criteria and because of those, I did not fall into any. So, they didn’t give me a job… I started getting calls from other candidates who had been facing this issue for years.”

“The Persons With Disabilities Act does not have any classification like that, nor does the UN Convention for Disability. So, it was something the department had decided…. By February 2014, my judgment came and the court gave me my seat,” said Singhal, who revealed she had also applied to IIM-A for an MBA.

At the meet, Singhal admitted that being in the bureaucracy required for her to become a “generalist”, and asked UPSC aspirants to have a plan to fall back.

More than 15 IIMA alumni, including many with disabilities, and present students took part in the meet and discussed ways to make civil society and educational institutes sensitive towards the needs of the 3 per cent differently-abled population.

Among  the speakers at the two-day event are India’s first differently-abled skydiver Sai Prasad Vishwanathan, executive secretary of Blind People’s Association Bhushan Punani and MD of Nirmal Foundation Nirmal Kumar.