[100 Emerging Women Leaders] Ira Singhal is a beacon of hope for women with disabilities

The urge to give back to society was ingrained early on in IAS officer Ira Singhal. She grew up in Meerut watching her parents always stepping in to help community members in need. 

Singhal, who lives with hyperkyphosis scoliosis–a spinal condition that causes the spine to curve excessively and deteriorate over time—has 62% locomotor disability. In 2014, she secured an all-India first rank in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam. 

Prior to that, she had passed the exam thrice in 2010, 2011, and 2013, securing ranks that should have ideally got her a posting. Despite acing the UPSC exam, she was denied a posting by the Department of Personnel and Training, owing to her disability. 

That was the first time she realised how disability could come in the way of meritorious civil services aspirants in India. 

“They cancelled my candidature saying no department would accept me owing to my disability,” she says. 

“The UPSC Exam has two criteria: one’s disabilities and abilities. I checked every box in the abilities required for the role and was still declined,” she adds. 

After her final attempt in 2014, Singhal applied to the Central Administrative Tribunal, challenging the decision. After a four-year legal battle, she was finally recruited as the assistant commissioner in the Customs and Central Excise Service in Hyderabad.

Her triumph made the headlines and catapulted her into the limelight as an advocate for disability rights. She is currently serving as the Deputy Commissioner in Tirap district, Arunachal Pradesh.

But, in many ways, her determination to stand strong in her abilities was born decades ago, when she was just a child.

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A lifelong urge to give back

In the 1990s, in Meerut where she grew up, Singhal couldn’t go to school for six months because of the curfew that was imposed following riots that frequently broke out in Uttar Pradesh. 

As a child who excelled in academics, Singhal was greatly impacted by the conflict-ridden region early on in life. She saw that the government functionaries who exercised the authority to keep the city calm during volatile times were the civil servants. 

“We were constantly listening to news about how the district magistrate had put laws in place to deescalate the situation,” Singhal tells HerStory. 

“That was my earliest introduction to civil servants and the power they held during crucial times in the state,” she says.

In 1995, her family then moved to Delhi where, she says, no one thought about government jobs and people were always aiming to enter the corporate world. This influenced Singhal; most of her family members were businessmen, lawyers, doctors or chartered accountants. 

After a B.Tech from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Singhal did an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi. This was followed by a brief stint as a marketing intern in Coca-Cola Company and, later, as a strategy manager for Cadbury. 

“I was getting the highest increments at these jobs, but it was only a matter of time before I realised my heart was in adding value to people’s lives,” says Singhal.

She began wondering how her efforts at work were helping anyone outside that world. So, she quit her job and decided to write the UPSC exam and get into civil services. 

Soldiering through biases

Over time, Singhal realised how her disability and her identity as a woman considerably reduced her opportunities in extracurricular activities like theatre. 

“When I visit colleges for cultural events, I see that women continue to be given roles that require them to catwalk across the stage as the audience judges them on how they look, or what they’re wearing,” she says.

“Male students continue to resist their female counterparts from getting elected to positions of power. And if you are a woman and a person with disabilities, you have to work way harder than any other demographic to prove yourself worthy of the same jobs and positions that abled, male members enjoy,” she adds.

Even today, every time she meets a new stakeholder at work, Singhal says she has to prove from scratch that she’s deserving of her job. 

She points out that had she ranked any less than number one in her final attempt at the UPSC exam in 2014, her chances of getting a government position would have been slim. 

“A certain sense prevails that people with disabilities are irrelevant. If they were looked at as relevant, public spaces and voting centres would be disability-friendly, as that would give them agency,” says Singhal. 

Singhal believes education is the only way to achieve equality in society.

“At the end of the day, becoming a civil servant or not is still a choice, whereas education is not. It is one’s ticket to freedom and equality. For this reason, my dream is to make education accessible to all children with disabilities,” she says.