"...I was a tiny girl asking them to help in the dark night"; What saddens this “divyang” IAS officer Ira Singhal?

Ira Singhal

ON Mann ki Baat radio address aired on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that the term 'viklang' should be replaced by 'divyang' (divine body) for persons with disability. BoI here presents an incident which Ira Singhal, an IAS officer-trainee and the first differently-abled woman to top civil services exam, had narrated in a social media site. This "divyang" civil servant was coming back with three of her friends from LBSNAA in Mussoorie to Delhi on the pre-Christmas day. As they reached Muradnagar in UP, they saw a...
Maruti car crashing into a tractor. It was the busy Delhi-Meerut highway. They stopped, helped pulling out two injured persons. They called local ambulance, but it did not reach. Their car was used to take one of the injured to the hospital. But they needed one more car or ambulance immediately to save the life of the other injured person.
“All the cars were slowing down when passing us in order to stare at the mess and glorify in the horrific scene. But as I knocked and banged on the sides of at least 20 cars and waved frantically to many many more, NOT EVEN ONE stopped. This is our humanity. We finally called the police van and transported one of them”, Singhal wrote in a Facebook post.
One of the injured persons died.
“It saddens me that not even ONE of those people thought that it could have been them just as easily. Not even one had enough shreds of humanity to stop and help. Is this the nation we have created for ourselves? For all that these drivers knew, I was a tiny girl asking them to help in the dark night on a busy road on the scene of a horrible accident. And they all refused. This is our world. This is us”, she further wrote.
One of many people who commented on her post says, we are “literates but not educated”. “Countrymen need to show empathy in their day to day life to help fellow beings”.
Before getting into IAS, Singhal was selected as IRS (Customs and Central Excise), but the government initially denied her joining the service citing that this service (IRS-C and CE) is not identified “for both the arms affected persons”. But fought her case in Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) and took up the challenge of lifting 10 kg of weight in one hand in a medical re-examination in New Delhi’s Safdarjang hospital before getting her appointment letter.
Join us giving a big round of applause to this "divyang" civil servant.