Meet the blind IAS officer who passed the UPSC without coaching and whose mother sold pickles, took out a loan, and lost her father when she was ten years old

It’s critical to always maintain your vision in life, no matter what. IAS Jayant Mankale, who obtained AIR 143 in UPSC and never lost his vision despite losing his eyesight, demonstrated that this was correct.

Mankale, a Beed local, attended Amrutvahini College of Engineering in Sangamner to study mechanical engineering. After passing the UPSC test in 2020, he worked as a maintenance engineer for a private company.

Mankale had retinitis pigmentosa, a rare hereditary disease that causes the retina’s cells to break down and disappear, which resulted in a 75% loss of eyesight. At the age of ten, he lost his father, a water pump operator. Since then, since his father’s pension was inadequate, his mother and two older sisters have been funding his schooling in Pune by selling pickles. In order to support his schooling, he also took out an education debt, and he never wavered in his will to pursue his ambition.

In 2015, I lost seventy-five percent of my vision while working for a private company. My life was completely gloomy after that. My father was already dead, and I had a difficult time making ends meet. But UPSC offered me a fresh start and optimism,” he said.

Mankale battled a dire financial problem while he studied for the UPSC in Marathi. “My financial situation prevented me from purchasing the screen reader and audiobook. I tuned up to All India Radio for news and talks. I found the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV discussion programs to be quite helpful. In addition, I listened to talks given by well-known Marathi authors on YouTube. Using my phone, I snapped images of pages and often enlarged them to read them. It was very challenging for me to prepare since I had never read a National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) book and I was unable to take handwritten notes. He continued.

Jayant then passed the UPSC test in 2018 with an AIR rating of 923. Jayant was adamant about achieving his goal of being an IAS, however, so he tried again and passed with an AIR 143 score to become an IAS at last. “We can overcome every obstacle in our path if we are resolute in achieving success,” Mankale said.