: Born to Specially-Abled Farm Labourers, IRS Officer Braved Extreme Poverty to Fulfil His Dream #IndiaNEWS #Civil Servants Vishnu Auti, Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Aurangabad, distinctly

Born to Specially-Abled Farm Labourers, IRS Officer Braved Extreme Poverty to Fulfil His Dream #IndiaNEWS #Civil Servants
Vishnu Auti, Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Aurangabad, distinctly remembers the conversation he had with his father in 1972.
While he was playing with sand and stones, his father, Haribhau put his hand over his tiny shoulders and said, “If you do not study well you will end up toiling under the sun like me. Become the person who sits under the shade, not a labourer. ???
Although Haribhau said those words casually, on a sweltering afternoon at a construction site in Maharashtra’s Kumbharwadi village in Ahmednagar district, for Vishnu it became gospel truth.
By the time he turned 10, he realised life is possible without acute poverty, skipping meals, water scarcity and perpetual distress. He discovered a different life through television.
The tear-jerking journey of this income tax officer is also awe inspiring. But while he was more than willing to study to put an end to their strenuous life, the only question was how.
He tells The Better India how he gave his parents a better life and cracked one of India’s toughest competitive examinations.
‘Poverty Failed to Dampen Our Spirits’
Vishnu was born to Haribhau, who lost his eyesight while working, and Kailasabai, who is hearing impaired. They worked as wage labourers to provide meals to their three children and would often go without eating food for days. This took a toll on their health and physical exertion became more difficult with age.
There was no secondary school in the village that was plagued by a perpetual drought. Year after year, the parched village would lose crops due to water scarcity and this had a direct effect on Vishnu’s parents’ job. No crop meant no labour work.
Vishnu Auti with his parents
Haribhau had lost his children, his first wife and father to a severe drought in 1972. A few months later, he remarried to Kailasabai, who gave birth to three children, at a time when the village had no drinking water, sufficient food supply and jobs.
Illiteracy and disability further aggravated the problem for the Auti family. Moreover, no one wanted to hire disabled labourers.
“My mother would mix a lot of water in flour and we had rotis with a side of salt. My parents would leave the house early morning to hunt for work and my eldest sister would keep our spirits up. If by lunchtime our parents didn’t return with food, my sister would tell stories to distract me from my hunger. It was during this time when my dad told me about the importance of education and that changed all our lives forever,??? recalls Vishnu.
Even though there were problems and challenges in the house, Vishnu does not remember a day his parents crying, cursing their fate, or blaming the government for their sorry state of affairs.