Introduction
The medical examination can often be the largest hurdle for every government exam and can even end up breaking most of your dreams. RRB NTPC exam, one of the largest central government exams, with more than 1,26,30,885 applicants in the year 2019, is one of the most coveted posts in the government sector. With the multi-tier examination pattern, it can often take months to clear the exam, yet medical test can be one of the major hurdles.
Color Vision Test is one such component of the RRB NTPC exam. To understand better about the test, we should start our understanding by starting with knowing what is color blindness.
Color Blindness
What is Color Blindness?
- It will be astonishing to know that nearly 10 million cases of color blindness are reported per year in India. The deficiency of certain cells within the retina prevents us to differentiate between specific colors, which can lead to color deficiency.
- The inability to differentiate between different colors of green-red-yellow shade is often termed as a Red-Green color vision. It might lead to confusion to differentiate between the traffic lights and the main cause behind such an issue is the photoreceptors, in which if the cones are lacking, it can often lead to color blindness.
Well, it can often be unknown to most people until they appear for the color blindness test. Though it is a genetic condition, it may also develop with time, as one grows and develops in age and time. To better differentiate the colors, you can try with the doctor’s handouts, which are available, popularly known as Ishihara’s Test handouts.
With the different patterns and colors present in the test handout, you can realize if you are suffering from color blindness or not. Knowing about color blindness often becomes an important factor if you are appearing for government exams. We will cover in the following article as to how RRB NTPC requires its candidates to clear the color vision test to be eligible for the different posts.
Before we start to understand the importance of the color vision test in the RRB NTPC exam, it is imperative to know about the different posts available in the exam along with their medical requirements.
Let us observe the first few jobs. If we take the job of a loco driver, the most important asset of a loco driver is his vision. Not only the near field and far field vision but the ability to differentiate between the red, green and yellow colored lights make it one of the most important criteria for selection of loco driver. It is one of the most respected yet responsible positions which is up for grabs and color blindness would mean the inability to differentiate between the traffic lights and the color of the flags in the railway station by the ASM. This can lead to the breaking of the signals, thus causing bigger mishaps.
Secondly, in the A2 category, we have the post of ASM. Imagine, if the ASM instead of showing the red-colored flag to the passing super fast train ends up showing the green-colored flag, where the signal was to halt the train! The intensity of the disaster is beyond imagination.
Now, let us look at the posts in which color blindness is not a deciding factor. In the case of B2 or C1 posts, there is not a requirement of the ability to differentiate between the primary colors. It is imperative that the posts in themselves don’t have that mandate, thus ensure that even if you are color blind, you are still eligible for the posts.
| S. No. | Medical Category | Identified Post | Color Blindness |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | A-1 | Loco Driver, Motor in charge and shuntman | Not eligible |
| 2. | A-2 | Assistant Guard and Assistant Station Master | Not eligible |
| 3. | A-3 | Telecommunication, Locomotor inspector and inspector of Bridges | Not eligible |
| 4. | B-1 | Examiner of the train, track and RPF | Not eligible |
| 5. | B-2 | TTE staff | Eligible |
| 6. | C-1 | Station controller, telephone operator and Commercial department | Eligible |
| 7. | C-2 | Others | Eligible |
The color vision test is a part of the medical test in the RRB NTPC exam. You need not give any separate tests for the color blindness checkup. Color Vision Test take place in the following steps:
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1. The color vision test which is performed in the medical test is the Ishihara Test.
2. In the test, you will be shown 10-12 pages of the Ishihara booklet.
3. The booklet consists of a well-scattered dots of primary colors all across the page, along with identifiable dots which represent certain digits or words.
4. If you are able to recognize the digit in the booklet, you can rest assured that you are not color blind.
5. If you are unable to recognize the digits clearly, you need to look for posts that don’t require color vision as one of its passing criteria.
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a) The rapidity with which one is able to distinguish between the different colors
b) The ease with which one is able to focus on the nuances between the colors.
Did You Know? Color blindness can be one of the most unknown forms of deficiency in the body, which is both genetic and due to deficiency of diets. Look forward to a better form of diet can also help to recover from the color blindness, yet it is a genetic disease, so a complete recovery from the same is not possible. As a matter of fact, it is an incurable disease, but don’t lose hope as RRB NTPC as few posts that don’t test for color blindness. We hope, that you will get through them easily.
Often, you might have worked hard towards achieving your goal. You have scored respectable, yet you find yourself at the helm of affairs when it comes to the medical test. I have personally been in the same place. I remember I have cleared NEET 2017 with a state rank of under 10, yet I was made ineligible for becoming a doctor due to medical reasons. Trust me, it feels like the world has ended.
But, I did not give up on the situation. I would like to share a couple of tricks from my personal experience, which I believe would help you to recover from such a situation:
a) Anticipation:
- This can be the trump card which will set you apart from most of the competitors. Always have a back-up plan. Not because of you are doubtful about your success, but you are not sure about the uncertainties.
- As you are preparing for the RRB NTPC exam, you must look forward to the exams which don’t have certain stringent medical criteria like SSC CGL, IBPS PO, SBI PO, and other government sector exams, where color blindness is not an issue.
FAQ
1. How to rectify my color blindness?
At first, we need to understand that color blindness is a genetic disease. Unlike many other diseases of the eye, it is carried by the X chromosome, hence no medicine or lens can cure the color blindness.
2. How many types of color blindness are present?
There are three different kinds of color blindness. To know the type of color blindness, consult with a physician.
3. Which government exams don’t check for color blindness?
Though there are many exams conducted by central and state government that check for color blindness, a few of them which don’t look for color vision in their medical tests include IBPS PO, IBPS CLERK, LIC, SBI PO, certain posts in SSC CGL and other banking and insurance sector exams.
4. Which other government exams ask for a color vision test?
Other exams which ask for the color vision test include:
- Defense exams
- Military exams
- Medical exams
- Air force/ Army/ Navy
- Mining related jobs
- ONGC
- Coal India
- IOCL
- PGCIL
- BHEL
- NTPC
- LnT
- DRDO
- ISRO
- BARC
- IES
GYQ (Grow Your Quotient):
In this section, let us explore some of the quirky yet interesting facts about color blindness:
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1. Men are more prone to color blindness than women. As much as 8% of men and only 0.5% of women suffer from colorblindness, globally.
2. Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, has a blue background. Why? The founder of facebook is colorblind. For colorblind people, blue is the easiest color to identify.
3. Every one of us is born as color blind. As we mature, our cells in our eyes develop such that we can perceive the different colors. By the end of 6 months, babies can differentiate between different colors.