A 13-year-old student in Bihar who was born without both hands has drawn widespread attention after a video showed her writing, handling books, and managing her school bag using her feet. Lakshmi, who studies in Class 4 at a government school in the state, has expressed her ambition to one day become a teacher.
The video, shared by ANI, shows Lakshmi performing routine classroom and school activities entirely with her feet, from unzipping her bag to holding a pen and writing on paper. The footage has circulated widely on social media, where users have highlighted her determination and resilience in the face of physical disability and limited educational resources.
Her story matters because it sits at the intersection of two recurring concerns in India’s public education system: the accessibility of government schools for children with disabilities, and the social and structural barriers such students often confront. Lakshmi’s case illustrates how a child can adapt to a school environment that, by most accounts, has not been designed to accommodate her needs, while also raising questions about what responsibility the state and school administration bear in providing assistive support.
According to her reported statements, Lakshmi has continued attending school and keeping pace with her classmates without the use of adaptive devices, and she has said she wants to become a teacher when she grows up. Her ambition has been cited in social media responses as an example of how students with disabilities in rural India often set their sights on careers that would allow them to support others facing similar circumstances.
Background and context frame Lakshmi’s story within a wider pattern. Education advocates have repeatedly noted that students with disabilities in India encounter multiple overlapping barriers in accessing schooling. These include a shortage of ramps, accessible toilets, and adapted furniture in government schools; a lack of trained special educators and aides; insufficient provision of assistive devices such as prosthetics, adapted writing tools, or digital aids; and social stigma that can result in families keeping children with disabilities out of school altogether. Children from rural and lower-income backgrounds, like Lakshmi in Bihar, are widely understood to face these barriers at higher rates than their urban or wealthier peers, though comprehensive state-level data on enrolment, retention, and learning outcomes for children with disabilities in Bihar is not consistently published.
India is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and has enacted the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which mandates accessible education and reasonable accommodation in schools receiving government funding. Implementation of these legal guarantees has, however, been uneven across states and districts. Disability rights organisations have argued that the gap between policy and practice remains substantial, particularly in government schools in rural areas, where infrastructure budgets are tight and awareness of legal obligations is limited.
Lakshmi’s adaptation, writing with her feet, is not unique in India. A small number of well-known examples of artists, athletes, and students who have developed foot-writing or mouth-writing skills have been documented over the years, and disability advocates often caution that such individual stories, while inspiring, can also obscure the systemic absence of accommodations. The admiration Lakshmi’s video has received online reflects a broader cultural narrative of resilience, but it also raises the question of whether the appropriate response to a child writing with her feet should be celebration alone, or whether it should include an assessment of why no assistive support appears to be reaching her.
What to watch next includes several verifiable questions. First, whether the Bihar education department or the relevant district administration issues any statement or response regarding Lakshmi’s schooling, her access to assistive devices, or her progression beyond Class 4. Second, whether disability rights organisations or special education advocates use the visibility of her case to press for data on the number of children with disabilities enrolled in government schools in Bihar and the accommodations available to them. Third, whether Lakshmi’s stated ambition to become a teacher prompts any engagement from teacher-training institutions or scholarship programmes that support students with disabilities. Finally, whether subsequent reporting identifies the specific district, block, or school where Lakshmi studies, which would allow for a more grounded assessment of the local infrastructure and resources available to her.
For now, Lakshmi’s case stands as a single, widely shared portrait of one student’s perseverance. It does not resolve the structural questions her situation raises, but it has put a human face on them at a moment when India’s disability and education policy frameworks are once again under public discussion.
Analysis:
Lakshmi’s story is best read as both an individual act of resilience and a stress test of India’s stated commitments to inclusive education. The fact that a Class 4 student is writing with her feet in a government school is, on one level, a testament to her determination. On another level, it is a quiet indicator that the support systems promised under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, are not consistently reaching children at the school level. Education policy research has consistently shown that inclusion cannot rest on the adaptation efforts of individual children; it requires trained teachers, accessible infrastructure, assistive technology, and active identification of students who need accommodations. Lakshmi’s viral moment is therefore a prompt to ask what combination of those supports, if any, exists in her school, and what would need to change for more children with disabilities to complete their schooling without having to rely entirely on personal improvisation. Her aspiration to become a teacher also fits a documented pattern in which disabled students, having navigated difficult educational journeys themselves, are drawn to professions where they can support others, but the realisation of that ambition will depend on whether secondary schooling, teacher eligibility pathways, and inclusive higher education are available to her.
Sources:
ANI via Times of India (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/born-without-both-hands-13-year-old-lakshmi-writes-with-her-feet-to-stay-in-school-the-bihar-student-now-dreams-of-becoming-a-teacher/articleshow/133757859.cms)
Source: Times of India – Top Stories
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Story synopsis gathered from: Times of India – Top Stories — source
