Seated in her office near the Worli-Sea face in Mumbai with a currency note spread across her left palm, Nirmala Nimbalkar uses the fingers of her right hand to delicately gauge the note’s length. Her fingers then roll on the surface of the crispy note as she tries to estimate the width. A few seconds of silence and she blurts out: “[Rs.] 500!” Correct.
Most visually challenged people like Nirmala devise a system for keeping track of paper currency. They fold denominations different ways, or separate them into pockets or parts of a wallet or purse. However, identifying the denomination of currency often proves arduous.
“With habit we do learn to cope. But since there is just too much dependence on strangers and sighted people we never know when they will cheat us,” says Nirmala, who reads text at the Braille press at the National Association for the Blind (NAB).
It’s for this reason that she welcomes, with hope, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s proposal to print currency notes with Braille signs. Nirmala lost her sight when she was one-year-old as a side-effect of measles.
Braille currency would help the blind easily identify a note’s denomination, saving them time and providing accuracy. The blind are often prone to confusion or even losses in case of hurried transactions. During business, a blind person transferring a note customarily identifies the denomination before releasing it to the receiver. The difficulty, however, arises while accepting the currency as they are not aware of the authenticity or source of the note. Doing a full check each time “you receive money from an autorickshaw driver or a shopkeeper is inconvenient and often embarrassing,” says K. Raman Shankar, president, NAB, and himself partially-blind.
The Braille currency is expected to serve over 50 lakh visually challenged people. The government plans to set up 15 new Braille presses while upgrading 10 existing ones. However, only a small section of the blind community in India is trained in Braille and many of the Braille printing units are defunct.
“Only those who are born blind or lose eyesight very early and have had the advantage of learning can follow the Braille,” says blind activist Sriram Patankar.
Despite its enthusiasm towards the Braille notes, a major concern of the visually-challenged community is the short life of the Braille markings — they are prone to wearing out quickly — reducing their utility. Mr. Shankar argues that similar steps should be taken for coins as regularly “tampering with the size and shape of coins” is stressful.
