It's the knowledge age

It’s the knowledge age, yet a wheelchair user cannot even enter most IT offices in India, let alone get jobs there. MNCs leave their equal-access facilities behind when they set up shop in India. But a handful of companies are making a difference.

In November 1997, Niranjan Nerlige fell down from the fourth floor of a building. He broke his right hand in several places, injured his spine and ended up in a hospital bed for two years. When he got out, his hand was fine but Niranjan had lost the use of his legs – permanently.

At the time o the accident, Nerlige was working as a technical leader with a company in Mumbai. The company was sympathetic. They gave him Rs50,000 for his treatment and promised to get back to him for his reinstatement once he recuperated. They never did.

After a painful recovery, Nerlige went back to his company, armed with a fitness certificate from the National Centre for Rehabilitation, only to be given the cold shoulder. They told him he would have to get up from the wheelchair and walk at least a few steps if he wanted his job. When Nerlige pointed out that he didn’t need legs to do programming, he was asked to get a fresh fitness certificate from a local doctor. When he got that, they told him to go home to Bangalore and wait for his appointment letter.

That letter never came. Two years have passed, but his last meeting with his former employers still rankles. “They saw me in this wheelchair. They knew what had happened to me. Yet they told me to get up and walk. Get up and walk!!!”

This is Nerlige’s story…it is also a story of humiliation and embarrassment that the disabled and physically challenged have traditionally had to face in India when looking for a job. A fortunate few bounce back.

As Nerlige did. In Bangalore, he bumped into Gopal Kamath, who had been his boss for a little under two months in Mumbai when the accident happened. Kamath had since joined Philips as general manager for medical systems. Kamath went to this chief executive officer C Mahalingam (who was also the Philips HR chief) and told him of Nerlige’s situation. Nerlige has called for an interview, his credentials were looked at and he was offered a job.

“I expected to be shunted around for long after this first meeting,” remembers Nerlige. Instead, a bare two days later, he was assigned an important software project. His confirmation came pat at the end of his six-month probation and his promotion came within a year. Nerlige is now senior manager for quality at Philips Medical Systems’ software division, in charge of his own team. The day DATAQUEST met him, Nerlige and his wheelchair were flying to Holland for a company meeting.

This is another story. It is a story of changing attitudes towards the physically challenged in the workplace….of employers realizing that the blind can hear, the deaf can see and spastics can think. It is a story, primarily, of companies beginning to understand the fact that the physically challenged are disabled, not dysfunctional. And more than most industries, it is in the IT industry that barriers are slowly being taken down and the doors being opened up for the disabled.

Source: Dataquest
Issue: Dated 30th April, 2001