Business and Entrepreneurship

Visual impairment: Blind since ten years of age

Born: January 7, 1950

"You can't be more than what you have unless you become more than what you are. It is worse not to have a vision than being a blind" - K. Ramakrishna

Born with congenital cataract in both eyes, Ramakrishna lost his vision in the left eye due to Glaucoma at the age of 9. Life became tougher as his right eye deteriorated and by the age of ten, Ramakrishna had completely lost his vision. But his willpower disallowed a physical handicap to defeat his inner vision of becoming economically independent through good education. Thus, with the propitious education aid offered to him by Mrs. Rehmad Fazalboy, Development Officer of The National Association of the Blind (India), Mumbai, he went on to complete his schooling and finished his graduation with top grade in Economics and Statistics. Ambitious to achieve more, he acquired the Masters Degree in Economics from the Mumbai University, again with a top grade.

That was not all. He followed up his education with work experience in an electronic company for 5 years and also became computer savvy after working in a computer maintenance company for a year. He marched ahead unafraid, to become the first visually impaired person in the world to compete without special concessions, with other students, for acquiring admission for the Masters Program. In 1984, he acquired the Master in Management Degree with a specialisation in Finance and distinguished himself as an economically independent employee at the Industrial Development Bank Of India (I.D.B.I.), Mumbai.

Ramakrishna continues to excel in his career with great aplomb and devotes his time in social activities at NGOs like the NAB. He uses electronic accessories like the speech synthesizer, a text reading machine that converts all printed matter into electronically synthesized human voice, a talking calculator and multimedia computer incorporated with a screen reading program to execute his daily jobs with ease and efficiency.

He is also a visiting faculty member with a number of management institutes in Mumbai where he lectures on project finance, financial management, equity research, operations research, etcetra. Apart from that he travels as a visiting lecturer to the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for Development Banking, Hyderabad and shares his expertise in technical, financial and commercial appraisal of industrial project with I.D.B.I. and other bank officers.

Some other commitments which keep Ramakrishna busy are :
 

• Honourary Secretary of the National Association for the Blind (India), Mumbai and supervision of its fund raising activities.
• Member of Managing Committee of the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind, Mumbai
• Secretary of the Indian Association for Visually Handicapped, Mumbai
• Chairman of electronic reading and computer training centres of I.A.V.H.

E-mail: k.ramkrishna@idbi.co.in