News - A visually impaired student's inspiring journey to IIM-A

Amit Jain was one of the first visually impaired students to have sought admission to the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Read on to know more about his journey.

Amit Jain is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) 2005 batch. Amit was one of the first visually impaired students to make it to the IIMs. Here he talks about his preparation and strategies with all the CAT aspirants.

Can you please give us a brief introduction about your family and education?

I belong to a middle class family and my vision problem was discovered very early when I was just one month old. I never went to a special school and my parents ensured that I should get into a normal school and study with sighted children, so that I would face the challenges like other students.

After completing my 12th, I went to NIVH (National Institute for Visually Handicapped) for a three month training to understand Braille (system used by the visually handicapped to read and write). I had partial vision, still I wanted to learn Braille and so I went to NIVH, in Dehradun. Once I completed my graduation, I was preparing for civil services, but could not make it. Then I appeared for CAT (Common Admission Test) examination and was able to make it to IIM Ahmedabad.

Talking about my experience with normal education, and schooling, yes, there were certain challenges. In regular schools, you will always find there would be certain people who will be very supportive to you, some would be neutral and others would not be supportive at all. Overall, I would say the experience was quite cordial, especially with the teachers.

Even for the 10th or 12th board exams, they were pretty helpful. I have done my 10th from CBSE board, and they have a provision for visually impaired students, wherein for any particular diagram question, we are given the opportunity to pick another non diagram question.

I completed class 12th in ISCE board. The ISCE board did not have any such policy for visually disabled students, like the CBSE had. However, they were cooperative whenever any support was required. This was in 1997 when sensitivity towards the visually handicapped was not a mainstream topic.