CHENNAI: The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the night of June 12 for NL Beno Zephine. The 25-year-old from Chennai was informed by the external affairs ministry on Friday that she has been inducted into the Indian Foreign Service, the first 100 per cent visually-challenged person to gain entry into the 69-year-old service.

“I am really thankful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking this big decision. I am told the IFS was not identified for the blind with certain exceptions made for candidates with low vision,” Beno, a probationary officer with the State Bank of India, told TOI. Since the news broke, she has literally been on her toes, giving motivational lectures at schools and colleges across the city.

Former diplomats have hailed the decision to allow 100 per cent visually challenged people into the service. “This is nothing short of a revolutionary decision as many promising people lost out for lacking 20:20 vision. Usually, candidates wearing spectacles (and thereby have perfect vision) are accepted and I know of at least one case last year where a person who had lost an eye in an accident was admitted to the income tax or one of the related revenue services,” former diplomat TP Sreenivasan said from Thiruvanathapuram.

“It’s a very forward-looking, generous view taken by the Centre. She (Beno) will have some difficulties, but having come so far, she will do extremely well. Also field work that is usually important for IAS cadres is not required for IFS officers; they need to study, analyse and give guidance,” he said.

“I am grateful that in order to give me the assignment, the central government has modified some parameters,” Beno said. She had cleared the civil services exam last year but her posting was pending. “I did get a hint about my posting as during the interview by the Union Public Service Commission, majority of the questions revolved around foreign policy and geo-strategic issues after I was asked about north-eastern states and had spoken about how most of the country’s borders were located in that region,” she said.

Beno is looking forward to her assignment, delighted that as a diplomat she will get opportunities to speak. “I like talking a lot and was active through school and college in debates and extempore competitions,” said Beno, a postgraduate in English from Madras University.

Her father, Luke Anthony Charles, a railways employee, and mother Mary Padmaja, a homemaker, have been huge sources of inspiration for Beno. Born with the disability, she was educated at the Little Flower convent. “I thank my teachers and coaches at state training institute and several IAS academies,” she said. “I have no role models but believe in my individuality,” she said.

Beno transcended the dependence on Braille books by switching to Job Access With Speech (JAWS), a software that allows visually challenged to read from a computer screen, to scan Tamil and English books. The software can also be adapted to a smart phone. “Parents, especially mother, read a lot of books and newspapers to me,” she said.

She wants to begin her diplomatic journey by meeting PM Modi and chief minister Jayalalithaa. “I want to seek their blessings and thank them for all the support”, she said.

On Sunday, she was felicitated by the Kingmakers IAS academy at Annanagar, where director Bhoominathan told her, “You have a huge responsibility to all the people who have supported you”.

Couching her words in diplomatic language, she said, “Either you mention the names of all people and institutes who have encouraged and supported me, or don’t publish any.” She names Manidhaneyan, Smart, Ganesh, Shankar and Time institutes, which helped her. “It is vitally important to discard disability from the mind,” she said.

 

 

Source: timesofindia