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Vision-impaired student gets offers from five IIMs

Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD: A visually-impaired son of an Ahmedabad-based businessman has received admission calls from five of the six Indian Institutes of Management; his only regret is that he has missed an IIM-Ahmedabad seat by just two marks.

Gaganbir Singh, who cannot read or write because of his very poor vision, scored 92.63 percentile marks in the Common Admission Test (CAT) held in November 2007.

He was eagerly waiting for the admission list, the publication of which got postponed from April 11, following the Supreme Court judgment on OBC reservation the previous day. As all the IIMs began the admission process on May 1, Gaganbir nourished a slender hope of getting into the IIM-A, but that was not to be.

He has now opted to join the IIM-Bangalore, which he says is the next best management institution.

Born and brought up in Ahmedabad, Gaganbir has just 15-20 per cent of the normal vision and needs someone to read out books for him, and in examinations to write answers as he dictates. He took the CAT the same way.

Gaganbir’s vision was damaged in early childhood, said to be because of an overdose of penicillin wrongly prescribed. Doctors then told him that he would steadily lose vision with age, but fortunately for him, the decay has almost stabilised at 15-20 per cent for the past few years.

Gaganbir said that in school he always preferred the company of friends who were weak in studies. “They would read out the books loudly and I will explain to them the topics that I understand.”

Determination

With his determination to do well, he never thought he was in anyway handicapped.

His mother, a commerce graduate, wanted him to be in an IIM. Gaganbir is happy that he has fulfilled her wish. She died last year.

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