heraldofindia/article.php?id=633 Injustice to Lipin Raj Stopped at the gate A.J. Philip There are some achievements which make you proud even if the achiever is a total stranger. When Prema Jayakumar, daughter of an autorickshaw driver in Mumbai, topped the chartered accountancy examination in her first attempt, I felt really proud. It proved that, despite all its drawbacks, our system allowed the really brilliant and laborious to come up in life. In the case of Lipin Raj, who lost an eye when it was accidentally punctured by a compass in his childhood, I felt prouder. To clear the prestigious civil services examination and interview with the 224th rank was no mean achievement for this visually impaired youth. That he chose Malayalam as the medium of examination, when use of any English word attracts negative marking, was in itself an achievement. Allowance had to be made for the fact that there were no texts in Malayalam for some of the main subjects he had chosen. Like New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to ascend Mount Everest in 1953, Lipin was the first to prove the full potential of Malayalam in the year it was declared a classical language. That is why Kerala’s poet laureate O.N.V. Kurup declared that for all the lovers of Malayalam, his 224th rank was actually the “first rank”. However, he chose English as the medium for the UPSC interview to prove that he was proficient in that language too. I first learnt about him when I read a cover story on him in the Sunday Magazine of the Malayala Manorama. I was fascinated by the fact that he hailed from a village I knew at close quarters and that he was an alumnus of my alma mater. My wife had heard from her mother about this boy losing an eye because she and Lipin’s mother were neighbours. It would have remained just a rags-to-riches story but for a call I received from Fr Biju Thomas, principal of a higher secondary school in Chandigarh. The priest told me that Lipin did not have any connections in New Delhi and he would be coming soon to appear for a re-examination of his eyesight, mandatory for selection to the civil services. He wanted me to help him find his way in the crowded heartless city, where the victim of a gang rape in a moving bus remained unattended in a naked condition on the roadside for half an hour till the police arrived, procured a piece of cloth and restored dignity to the hapless girl. I agreed to do whatever I could to make his visit successful. It was then that an idea occurred to me that he could be a guest speaker at Kerala Club, founded 74 years ago by two of India’s greatest civil servants, VP Menon, who as Sardar Patel’s right-hand man integrated all the princely states into the Indian Union, and KPS Menon, who became foreign secretary after heading our missions in Peking and Moscow. Club president Omcherri N.N. Pillai was more than happy to host him as in his own words, “Lipin showed extraordinary courage to write in Malayalam when most people pay only lip service to the language and that, too, in English”. Pillai, who had passed the same examination decades ago and had served the information department of the government, did not have to be told about the significance of his feat. At the club, Lipin spoke about his father who was in “real estate business”, though he sold only his own landed properties to finance his liquor addiction. He described how he would go to the nearest Kozhencherry town to buy The Hindu newspaper. One day the newspaper vendor told him that a youth like him used to buy the paper from the same stand and he became an IAS officer. He was none else but TKA Nair, who retired as chief secretary to the Punjab government and is now advisor to the prime minister. I have heard Nair speak at several public functions in New Delhi and Chandigarh. He keeps his words to the minimum like a blue-blooded bureaucrat. But while felicitating Lipin at the club, he abandoned all his restraint and spoke for over half an hour. He complimented him for his oratorical skills, excellent command of the Malayalam language and the courage he showed in choosing his mother-tongue as his medium of examination. After hearing Lipin speak for at least 75 minutes, everyone in the audience was convinced that he would make a good IAS officer. His mind was as clear as it was sharp. His success has already prompted 200 candidates to choose Malayalam as their medium in the forthcoming civil services examination. In the national Capital where everyone considers himself or herself a VIP and does not bother for anyone else, it was unusual to find everyone at the club wanting to be photographed with Lipin. I was amazed by the kind of friendship he established during his short visit. On his return to Kerala, where he is Assistant Manager with the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), he posted a thank-you note on his Facebook wall which was a testament to his literary ability. All the while, my prayers were that he would make it to the IAS, though he preferred the information service because of the brief stint he had in journalism. What a coincidence, the cameraman of a TV channel who had come to shoot him at Kerala Club was the one with whom he had once teamed up as a reporter! When a little bird told me that Lipin Raj did not eventually make it to the civil service, as he was disqualified on medical grounds, I could not believe it. When the final service allocation list was published on the website of the Department of Personnel on August 8, I found the names and addresses of 875 candidates. Alas, Lipin Raj’s name was not in it! Even more surprising, the column for “disabled candidates” remained blank. However, some names had the asterisk mark attached to them and a footnote on the 93rd page said this was because their rank might change because of the “indeterminate medical status of some of the candidates who are higher than these candidates in rank”. In any case, clarity does not seem to be the hallmark of the department. Disability can be defined as a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses or activities. Lipin Raj became a “disabled” the moment he lost one eye. “I could see only half of the people who interviewed me at the UPSC, as I had to turn my head to the other side to see the rest”, he recalled. To understand Lipin Raj’s predicament, I would request my readers to close one of their eyes to realize how their vision has been impaired. Sudha Chandran of film Naache Mayuri fame is a well-known Bharatnatyam dancer, who lost a leg in an accident. When she regained consciousness after the amputation, the first question she asked Dr Derek D’Souza was whether she would be able to dance again. “Why not?”, he is believed to have asked her. When she performs on stage, few realize that she uses a prosthesis. Does that mean she is not a disabled person? If the loss of a leg makes a person disabled, the loss of an eye, too, should make one disabled. The government does not think the way you and I think. For instance, the Planning Commission believes that if you earn Rs 32 per day in a city like New Delhi and Rs 27 in a place like Kayamkulam in Kerala where a kg of sardines cost Rs 150, you are not poor, which means you are rich. Let me not digress. The UPSC advertisement clearly says what constitutes visual disability: “For purpose of these rules the candidate shall be deemed to be a blind candidate if the percentage of visual impairment is 40 per cent or more. The criteria for determining the percentage of visual impairment shall be as follows: Better eye (6/9-6/18), Worse eye (6/60 to nil 40%)”. Lipin Raj first appeared for the medical test at Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi on June 4. He had certificates issued by three medical boards, which said his disability was 50 per cent. The medical board at Safdarjung, however, said it should be 30 per cent or 40 per cent or 75 per cent as per the World Health Organization (WHO) norms. The board referred him to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where he underwent several tests. On June 6, he was given a certificate saying that his vision was 40 per cent making him eligible for the civil services. But the Safdarjung Board refused to accept the OPD finding and the VEP test result on the specious plea that there was no official seal on them. They again prescribed another vision test at AIIMS for which the date available was five months later. The next day, i.e., June 7, he managed to get the seal on the test results which clearly said that he had 40 per cent but the Board did not attach this report with its findings sent to the Department of Personnel. Lipin had the shock of his life when the Department of Personnel in a communication to him said his vision was below 40 per cent and his candidature would be cancelled. He got his eyes checked by Dr Jacob S. Mathew, a renowned ophthalmologist of Kerala, who also certified as the AIIMS had done that his vision was 40 per cent. The chief doctor of Vasan Eyecare, a pre-eminent institution in the south, also certified him as eligible for the benefit of disability. On the basis of this representation, he was allowed to reappear for a test, this time at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi. The RML Hospital referred him to the Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS where the doctors yet again certified that he was within the range of disability and entitled to the accompanying benefits. The board at RML, too, seems to have ignored the referral hospital’s opinion, which should have been final. During the last four years, he has appeared before three medical teams in Kerala, which means 12 doctors, who certified him eligible for disability. He has an identity card for a person with disability issued by the Social Welfare Department of the Government of Kerala. Under these circumstances, the denial of a job in the civil services is a great injustice to Lipin. I believe it is a clever ploy to accommodate a person from the general category in his place. All his efforts to pass the UPSC examination and face the interview board have gone in vain. If one goes by the Department of Personnel’s decision, he is not visually disabled. Then, will he be allowed to appear in the general category? No, he will not be, because he has zero per cent vision in one of his eyes. So he will not be eligible for the post either way. Now, come to think of it, does it really matter whether his vision is 39 per cent or 41 per cent in the discharge of his duties as a civil servant? Why was the AIIMS decision not honoured when both the boards, at Safdarjung and at RML, had referred the matter to India’s top-tier ophthalmologic centre? In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Marcellus, shaken by the many disturbing events and angered by Claudius’s mismanagement of the body politic notes that Denmark is festering with moral and political corruption when he says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. To this, Horatio replies, “Heaven will direct it” meaning God will guide the state of Denmark to health and stability. Like in the case of Denmark, I wish a higher authority had intervened in Lipin Raj’s case to undo the injustice done to him. I am sorry to say that the Indian state has yet again proved by this one act that it is inconsiderate to the needs of the disabled. Alas, it does not realize that it has shut the doors of the civil service to a young man, who would have been a role model for thousands of poor but hopeful youth. The writer can be reached at ajphilip@gmail Courtesy: Indian Currents
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 01:13:57 +0000
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