Forty years ago, in a small hospital in Andhra Pradesh, a doctor told a young couple that their newborn son was blind. The whispers began almost immediately. What life will he ever have? He will end up begging. This is a curse on the family.
But lying in that hospital bed, his mother made a promise that would shape the course of her son’s entire life. “My son will not beg. He will not live in shame. Even if I must stand against the world, I will make him walk with dignity,” she told her family.
That son is Nagababu Jannu, and his mother’s promise would stay with him through every chapter of his life. It carried him from a small town in Andhra Pradesh to a High Court battle that changed admission rules for blind students across the state, and eventually to a Vice President’s chair at a global technology firm.
A childhood shaped by hardship
Nagababu was born blind in Vuyyuru, a small town in Andhra Pradesh, into a family struggling with poverty and instability. His father was a cycle mechanic who battled alcoholism, while his mother stitched cloth bags late into the night to help keep the family afloat.
Growing up, Nagababu heard people define his future before he was old enough to define it for himself. Many around him believed that blindness automatically meant a life of dependence. His mother refused to accept that narrative.
Long before he was fighting institutions, Nagababu was learning to question the assumptions people made about what a blind child could become.
He was enrolled first at a government school for blind children in Hyderabad, where the family had relocated, before moving to the Devnar School for the Blind.
It was here, he says, that he discovered the transformative power of education, technology, and teachers who believed in possibilities rather than limitations.
It was also at Devnar that he met Lingam Pavan Kumar, with whom he would build one of the most enduring friendships of his life. “We met at the school for the blind where both of us studied,” Pavan Kumar recalls.
The two boys, as it turned out, were also from the same village, a coincidence that “brought us closer,” he says. “We have become so close that we supported each other in everything,” across periods of hardship and moments of happiness.
Then, in 2001, as a Class 9 student, Nagababu sat before a computer for the first time — an object that was still a novelty for most sighted Indians, let alone a blind teenager in a small-town school. “I came to know that even the blind can work on a computer,” he recalls. It was a discovery that would reshape the rest of his life.
A counter that said no
After Class 10, Nagababu chose to pursue engineering, and decided a polytechnic diploma would be his way in. The application process, back then, was entirely offline. He and his mother travelled to buy the form in person. At the counter, they were told plainly: candidates with more than 40 percent disability were not eligible to apply.
A computer screen opened up a possibility Nagababu had never been shown before: that technology could become a tool for independence, not a barrier.
Nagababu did not turn back. “I wanted to go ahead and apply,” he says of that moment. He did, receiving a roll number and appearing for the exam with a scribe who, he says, struggled to read the question paper properly.
According to him, he was lucky to have her there at all. Despite the odds, he qualified, although his rank was not outstanding.
At counselling, the same rejection awaited him. Someone even suggested he consider training as a telephone operator instead — an option put to a boy barely out of his early teens who had a very different plan for his life.
“I said, I know how to get an education… I want to learn something, I want to continue my education,” he remembers telling them. “We have to be treated equally, I thought.”
Nagababu fought this battle alone in the counselling hall, while Pavan Kumar was preparing to confront a similar barrier. Back at Devnar, he and Pavan Kumar had, while still in Class 10, discussed and agreed that Pavan Kumar too should pursue polytechnic and a diploma in engineering.
Pavan Kumar would go on to face an almost identical wall — denied admission at counselling despite qualifying.
He too eventually took his case to the High Court and won, after a committee was constituted to examine his eligibility for the engineering course. “The committee asked doctors to conduct a series of tests to assess his abilities,” Pavan Kumar says of the ordeal, which he passed before finally being granted admission.
Five minutes that changed everything
Nagababu took his case straight to the Commissioner of Technical Education, invoking the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, which was already in force.
Every classroom came with its own set of obstacles, but Nagababu kept finding ways to make an education designed for sighted students work for him.
“I told him that I’m not asking for a job. I want to learn something, I want to continue my education,” he said.
The meeting lasted barely five minutes. It was enough. The Commissioner understood his intent, Nagababu says, and granted him admission to college. But the fight for an equal education was far from over.
When engineering became a legal battle
Once in polytechnic college, engineering drawing became one of Nagababu’s biggest challenges. His lecturer worked with him one-on-one, using a tactile mesh board. Objects were placed on the board so Nagababu could feel their shapes and understand technical diagrams through touch. “That is how I learned all my engineering concepts,” he says.
But other hurdles remained. The State Board of Technical Education did not allow him to take certain exams until he met additional requirements. His practical exams from the first year were also left unevaluated, which meant he had to take them again.
When diagrams could not be seen, they had to be felt. For Nagababu, touch became another way of understanding the language of engineering.
After facing repeated refusals, Nagababu approached the High Court. Since the case could take years, a presentation was arranged before several government departments in July 2005.
Two months later, a university agreed to assess him directly. During a six-to-seven-hour session, examiners asked him how he wrote programs, assembled components and navigated independently. “They asked me questions back,” he recalls.
In October 2005, a government order was issued allowing Nagababu to pursue engineering. The order applied beyond Nagababu’s case, opening the path for other blind students as well.
Nagababu went on to complete both a Polytechnic diploma and a BTech in Computer Science, a journey he says made him the first blind person in India to achieve both qualifications.
The people who kept him going
None of this happened without cost. The legal battle brought expenses that were, in Nagababu’s words, “out of the imagination.”
Nagababu’s story is not about overcoming blindness. It is about refusing to let other people’s ideas of blindness determine the size of his life.
A schoolteacher stepped in to support him financially through the proceedings, and once the government order came through, the S R Gudlavalleru Engineering College agreed to sponsor his entire education and boarding, arranging evening classes to help him catch up on the semester lost to litigation.
Through it all, his mother was his constant. “My mother used to take me to school every day and stayed back there, and back home in the evening,” he says.
His grandmother stood firmly behind him too, even as much of the extended family discouraged the path he had chosen. His father, despite his own struggles, arranged a computer for his son and covered fees before the college later waived them entirely.
From his first project to a Vice President role
Nagababu secured a campus placement in 2007, though the offer came only after additional telephonic rounds once the company grew unsure of hiring him.
The 2008 recession delayed his joining, and he finally began work at Wipro Technologies in 2009, starting on a small project before being confirmed as a Project Engineer. “I was performing very well,” he says simply.
The workplace that once seemed unsure about hiring him eventually became a space where his skills, rather than his eyesight, did the talking.
More than 17 years and several companies later, Nagababu today serves as Vice President and Lead Software Engineer at a global financial institution, navigating code line by line with a keyboard and screen-reading software such as JAWS and NVDA.
The fight isn’t over yet
Even today, barriers persist. Nagababu recalls waiting two months in 2010 to open a salary account, which was resolved only after he wrote directly to the bank’s Managing Director. A similar refusal at another bank in 2013 required escalation before it was resolved.
As recently as last week, he approached a bank for a loan and heard a familiar line: “We will not work with blindness.”
“Even in 2026, this is the case,” he says, pointing to what he believes is the deeper issue: a lack of awareness, also reflected in websites and apps that leave buttons unlabelled for screen readers, despite the accessibility guidelines intended to guide them.
‘Vision & eyesight are not the same’
In 2023, Nagababu underwent major spinal fusion surgery and was left with chronic nerve pain that he still lives with. Then, while finishing his memoir, The Unseen Path, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Even during treatment, he kept working on the book, reviewing proofs from the oncology ward. He chose not to stop.
“Vision and eyesight are not the same thing,” he says. “Vision is the ability to keep moving forward when circumstances become uncertain. It is the decision to continue building, learning, and contributing, even when life demands more from you than you thought possible.”
The Unseen Path traces this entire journey, from his mother’s promise in a small-town hospital to a career in global technology leadership. To make it accessible to everyone, Nagababu has also released the book as a free audiobook podcast on YouTube.
Nagababu’s story is not about overcoming blindness. It is about refusing to let other people’s ideas of blindness determine the size of his life.
Pavan Kumar, now a manager at the State Bank of India, has seen Nagababu’s journey from close quarters. He has faced setbacks of his own too. After qualifying for a job in 2009, his joining was delayed for years.
Perhaps that is why the two friends understand each other so well. Speaking about Pavan, Nagababu says his old schoolmate “never lost his spirit. There are ups and downs, but he never lost his spirit.”
Pavan, in turn, remembers that financial struggles were among the things that weighed most heavily on Nagababu. “I give him confidence. He was confident, but sometimes multiple problems at a time will shut you down,” he says.
Their friendship has lasted through school, careers, setbacks and years of uncertainty. For Pavan, it carries a lesson many people can relate to: sometimes, when life feels overwhelming, having someone who reminds you to keep going can make all the difference.
“Being a human, we will always face problems, but we should never give up our courage,” he says.
“If we believe that something can be solved, the universe will support us one way or the other. Keep your belief and keep moving forward. Always chase your dreams. You will succeed at one point in time. Believe in your hard work, not luck. Then you will succeed one day for sure.”
