Shalini Khanna on NAB India Centre for Blind Women

Let’s hear Shalini Khanna talk about the training programs at the National Association for the Blind (NAB) Centre for Blind Women, Delhi, which equip women with essential skills for independence and employment, including specialised medical training to use their tactile sense to detect breast cancer
Shalini shares the challenges, provides examples of blind employees excelling in various fields, and highlights the limitless potential of people with disabilities
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Can you share details about NAB and the training programs it provides for people with visual impairments?
I am currently also the Chairperson for the Skill Council of PwDs in India.
And uh so, I also feel a little more responsible for the activities for the blind, especially in India.
Because I feel whoever is training disabled or employing disabled wants to always keep visually impaired a little aside because they are a little more severe in their disability when it comes to learning and working, uh vocational training.
So this institute, this center working from 2002, has brought many new programs to India from other countries also.
So um like we started with a computer training and packaging training, we started employing girls in factories.
We were the first ones in the country to employ blind women in the factories.
Well that continues to be a major vocation and a major employment avenue because out of that training about 70% women get employed, which is a large number considering blindness of women.
And apart from that, then we got a training from Japan.
Uh now this the spa is called Talking Hands.
And uh in Japan and China, there are some vocations which are earmarked for blind people
and which are very market-oriented, that’s their oriental therapy.
So, uh all thanks to the Tsukuba University in Japan and their trainers, they approached us and we brought it to India.
We started it in Ahmedabad, BRA and started it in NIVH also and here.
Uh under this training, the blind people with their tactile sense, they sense the blockages of your nerves in any region of your body and then they bring the opening to those nerves with their pressure.
And it’s amazing how, because of that focus that comes from the blindness, they are able to figure out the slightest blockages in your nerves, in any part of the body.
That’s what we started in 2011-12, and then slowly, in 2017, we got a training called “Discovering Hands” from Germany, where again, using the tactile sense, the blind women would uh find out the smallest abnormality in a woman’s breast, in the third layer of the skin—that’s the innermost layer of the skin, and so they can figure out the first stage of cancer, if there is.
Uh it took took a long time convincing doctors in India that just a touch is making it possible
while mammography and what not has been put into place, you know, to stop the breast cancer from spreading like epidemic.
I mean, so many deaths because of breast cancer in India, especially.
And the doctor in Germany who is the founder of this whole thing, he uh looked for us because the numbers of deaths in from breast cancer in India are the most in the world and the number of blind women in India are the most in the world.
So he felt this was a very win-win situation.
And uh we started in 2017, Covid stopped the practice a little for two years.
But by now, there are so many blind women who are working in Tata, Varanasi,
they’re working in Medanta, they’re working in three public hospitals in Gurgaon, Haryana.
They go for rural camps all the time.
They just came back yesterday from Barabanki covering seven villages, 500 women.
And now they’re going off to Hoshiarpur.
So because we want to take this therap—this uh technique to the regions where mammography doesn’t reach, where ultrasounds don’t reach.
And the women even in rural regions are suffering from breast cancer, no, nothing is saving them from that.
So, this is amazing.
I mean now the doctors are accepting this technique, that again just the tactile sense.
Because a blind woman is able to read 0.1mm of the Braille dot.
So the first stage of cancer is still 0.5mm she’s able to–0.5cm, she’s able to figure that out.
Then came “Blind Bake” in Covid.
Since uh when I started the center in 2002 for NAB India,
uh it was a result of a study called ‘Status of Blind Women in India,’
where we had studied 500 women across the country and their needs.
And I also saw personally that there are women in many regions who don’t know what to do,
whose parents don’t know what to do with them.
So, they marry off their blind daughter with a sighted daughter to the same man.
Yeah, like a trousseau, I saw it and I was shocked but the woman was not even indicting her own parents because she knew that her parents didn’t know what to do with her.
She did not know how to make a cup of tea because nobody was teaching her that.
People were scared, mothers are scared that my daughter is gonna get harmed.
So that’s when we decided that when we start the center, every woman would learn cooking.
Though initially, the girls didn’t like it, let me tell you, because they were never taught, so they were scared, and also it was work.
So they used to feel “Why do I have to do so much work”.
And uh but slowly, after now these many years in I think 2018, some blind girl only told me,
“You’re not able to find a job for me. I’m totally uneducated, but I can cook well.
Why don’t you try me opening a canteen within house for your staff? You have 20 people. Let’s try”
No harm. Fine, start. And in a little corner, we started her little canteen.
Then two came, then four came, then a girl came from Nepal saying uh,
“I’ve heard that you teach this and baking, and I want to start a cafe in Nepal, so teach me.”
She came, flew all the way from Nepal.
And in uh Covid, funding stopped, activities stopped, and this husband of mine, he said,
“You have so much space, this canteen—move outside. Let them try catering to people, and let’s see how it works.”
And we were very very doubtful—that my lawn goes.
Yeah, and I don’t know how they are gonna face the world like that.
But November 21st, 21 we started and in 2022, people started coming in.
People were accepting it very well.
And I was shocked to see how they were working beautifully in baking, Ritika.
We had tried so many job mappings in hotels, and hotel guys would not accept blind women in the kitchen and baking. They would say, “it’s risk-prone.”
But if you now see, uh we have a nutritionist, Ishi Khosla, on board—a very senior woman in the country who’s written books on whole foods and all that.
She was shocked to see the blind guy baking because she said—he his measurements don’t go bad even in one cake,
even if he’s making 50 together because he’s so precise in his measurements, and baking is all about measurements.
And we did make our machines a little blind-friendly because no machines are made blind-friendly.
And we made some kind of arrangements on the machines to you know, give them the monitoring of feedback.
And well, here you are—the Blind Bake got the Condé Nast Award this year, the ‘Spirit of Hospitality’ and I’m still getting goosebumps.
Because this was something that took a lot of labor, at the same time it’s all because of blind women.
Their whole sense of ownership and enterprise, and not saying uh “no” to anything.
And they made it so amazingly.
We have two cafes, one in Taj Mansingh, one in Taj Palace.
They’re being called by Facebook, by Google, by anybody to just come and hold that stall and let people see that you can cook and you can serve.
So, with Discovering Hands, with Talking Hands, with Blind Bake, they have totally reversed the table.
They have come on the other side of the table to serve you.
And not just receiving the service, and I am um very proud.
Very very proud mother of thousands of women right now.
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As the chairperson of the Skill Council for PwDs in India, what initiatives have you taken to support people with different disabilities?
There are NGOs of from other disabilities also in the council sitting there.
So, there is, for the deaf you know like the sky is the limit right now.
People have worked so much, be it Noida Deaf Society, be it uh another one in Gurgaon.
So many people have, Muskan, so many people have worked.
I think the two disabilities that were not uh being picked up to work for were intellectual disabilities and blindness for visual impairment.
And me and Shanti Auluckji, both had been kind of really speaking all the time that this has to be uh finished.
Because see numbers are everybody’s targets these days, for the council also, they had targets to fulfill.
And the numbers can’t be fulfilled with severe disabilities, right.
So, somehow these disabilities were always sidelined.
But um we had already piloted three training programs for certification, three years back for the council.
The CCE, Customer Care Executive Course, the Assistant Spa Therapist and the Packaging.
And they adop, they were adopted and now after I came uh as a Chairperson,
yes, I have been pushing the Discovering Hands to be certified in India and by the medical field.
So we’re really trying hard.
And about the intellectual disabilities also we’ve made a task force, especially,
to discuss uh about what kind of studies have to be taken up to understand what can be done better.
And also that um this sheltered employment also perhaps might be accepted as employment
because with intellectual disabilities you have to um look at any kind of way to, you know, employ them.
So, uh there are separate task forces now which are taking care of um the activities for different disabilities in it.
And the ultimate objective is to accept as many number of disabilities by the year to uh foray into different kind of employments.
And main work of Skill Council is to certify the courses.
So now there are some 300 courses which are certified already and maybe the number is here or there, but the number is definitely larger than uh 5 years back.
And it’s a young council, it’s just a 7-year-old Council.
So, um I’m sure the times to come are better times to come for disability.
Especially when you can now see so many bright, young, dynamic disabled people into the play.
I mean when you are watching the national awards you feel so proud to see one Vineet Saraiwala.
Then there’s Danish Mahajan from Radio Udaan.
There is this it’s just never ending, Sam Taraporewala and lovely, absolutely.
I saw my girls receiving the award on the Condé Nast stage and I was like nothing is impossible if they’re just guided a little out of their house.
That’s about it, rest they will do.
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What do you think is the biggest challenge for people with disabilities in leaving their homes and finding jobs?
I feel the fears of the guardians and the parents are the most, the the biggest hindrance
in the way of disabled people coming out of their homes and being a part of the main workforce.
Even now, there are, we do train intellectually disabled people also who have a slight problem in the eyes too.
And I can see that the people who can afford.
I mean uh students coming from well-off homes, they’re the worst uh subjected to a lot of fear.
Because the parents can provide a car all the time to you,
and they are very scared that you should not be going out into new places.
All your growth is totally barred.
And this is not going to happen like that.
You will have to kick the child out to say, please go make your life.
So, I hope that parents of intellectually challenged people can give away their their fears for the sake of their children.
To let them go explore their own world, otherwise you’re projecting your own fears on the child most of the time.
So, I feel that it’s the it’s the youngsters, it’s the adolescents who have to uh shun off their fears and come out of their homes themselves also.
I always say sitting here everybody has to fight their own war.
Nobody is going to fight it for you and then win it for you.
So, I have seen blind women really fighting their own wars at homes.
Leaving their homes at the cost of not coming back ever.
And imagine a blind woman who can’t see outside her door,
now saying—I am going to get out, you throw me in the jungle or whatever.
I heard one of my girls sharing on the disability day that my parents told me—
Once you go out of this house you’re never going to come back, we’re not going to accept you.
And she said—doesn’t matter maybe I’ll get killed outside but this is also not less than death, this is not the life I want to live.
I want to definitely try getting out into the jungle that you make the world out to be.
Fine, maybe some animal is going to kill me, at least I will not die feeling I have never tried.
So, I feel life is worth trying.
She’s a chef in the cafe now, Kismat.
And she’s a slow learner.
But that day made me realize, look at her growth comparing to where she was, don’t compare her with anybody else.
Where she was, where she had to fight, she came out of the house on herself.
She has been here trying trainings and now, ‘chef’ is the most difficult training a blind woman can go through.
But she has put her hand into it and slowly she is really trying.
Once you start trying nothing is impossible, for anyone in the world.
We’ve seen the worst disabilities making it in Abilympics, yeah?
So, I feel all the blind women who are listening to me, they must feel that the world is blind and sight is very very blinding.
You are going to make the world better and sighted once you come out and start making them see what you can do better.
So start today.