Woman with 80% hearing loss shines in UPSC 2 years in a row

AGRA: Twenty-six-year-old Vaishali Sharma, an MBBS from Aligarh Muslim University, cannot hear much. But she has trained herself to read your lips. Her 80% hearing impairment though has not been able to stop her shining march to success. With 824 marks (out of 2,025) in last year’s civil services examination, she was the second rank holder in the physical disability category, but wasn’t selected because examiners found her “temporarily unfit” as she was overweight.Candidates need to pass a medical examination, where their BMI is also measured among other things.
She shed pounds instead of tears and appeared in the exam again. This year, she has scored 970 marks (47%), topping the exam.
Of the 1209 candidates who cleared UPSC this time, 44 are in the physically challenged category. Among the 44, 15 are hearing impaired, seven visually impaired and 22 suffer from locomotor disability and cerebral palsy.
Vaishali said she was heartbroken when she wasn’t recruited despite losing weight in 2016 and getting herself certified by the government’s health department.
Her family wanted to move court to seek justice for her, but she was determined to prove her point "in another way". “Though I was shocked by what had happened then, I never gave up and was sure that I would succeed again,” she told TOI.
But for that, she needed to overcome her disability first.
Vaishali said though she has been using hearing aids, it’s not easy as these devices only amplify the sound and do not process the words. Due to her impairment, she could not pursue her PG in clinical branches because of difficulty in using stethoscope and not responding to emergency phone calls.
She couldn’t even attend coaching classes for her preparation for UPSC, as understanding words in a group is more difficult. “I spent long hours in the AMU library studying by myself,” she said.
“I started lip reading and also observed people keenly to understand their body language and expressions,” she said, adding that during interviews she focuses on the interviewers’ lips to understand what is being said. This year, she managed to score 170 marks out of 275 in the interview.
Vaishali, who recently started working in a Mathura hospital as a junior resident, said she felt low and frustrated many times in her childhood as she found herself "different" from others. “But my family supported me. Whatever I have achieved today is due to their support,” she said. Her father is a former banker who took early retirement to focus on the career of his two daughters and a son, all of who are medical practitioners.