The Blind Corner at the Liluah workshop. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

There’s a power cut at Eastern Railway Wagon and Carriage Workshop but Kinkar Ghosh does not stop working. The other 12 in his enclosure also continue their work as the rest of the workshop goes silent. The 13 don’t need light to perform their duties, being members of the workshop’s special technical unit for the visually challenged.

The men were appointed at the Liluah workshop 26 years ago during a special recruitment drive. In their enclosure, called Blind Corner, they do light engineering work that does not involve use of sharp instruments.

“Visually challenged people generally work in ticket counters or make announcement through public address systems. They are seldom given technical jobs in a railway workshop,” said D.K. Jha, the chief public relation officer of Eastern Railway.

Ghosh removes iron deposit from the two ends of the longer hangar so that the distance between them is constant. “The longer hangars are a part of the trolley. They help in uniform distribution of the load of a coach on a trolley,” said Manas Ranjan Mandal, the senior engineer of the welding workshop.

“The job is not just a means to earn money. It offers us an opportunity to prove that we can perform as well as those who can see,” says 51-year-old Ghosh, who travels three hours to his workplace from his home in Sonarpur.

One of his colleagues at Blind Corner, Buddhadeb Mukherjee, however, said the job is his only means of earning a livelihood. “My son is a final-year engineering student. He has already bagged a job,” said. The authorities are pleased with the performance of the visually challenged workers. “They don’t have the tendency to while away time,” says R.P. Yadav, the chief works manager of the workshop.