Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said there are not enough facilities available in the education and health sectors in rural areas of the country, but the situation is improving. He was speaking at the inauguration of a multi-speciality charitable hospital in Sinhgad fort area. “In our country, we do not have enough facilities available in education and health sectors in rural areas. There are facilities in urban areas, but the situation in rural areas is not so good,” Gadkari said.
The situation in rural areas is like if a school building is available, there are no teachers. If teachers are available, the school building is not there, he said. “If both the things (teachers and school building) are there, then students are missing, and if all three elements are there, then education is not there,” he said. Though this is the situation of schools in rural areas, it is now improving, the road transport and highways minister said.
“As far as clinics (health facilities) are concerned, the situation is also the same in rural areas and we all have experienced this fact very well during COVID-19. There are 115 aspirant districts (in the country) which are socially, economically and educationally backward and the situation over there is very bad,” Gadkari said. The hospital which Gadkari inaugurated has been built on the premises of ’Apla Ghar’, an orphanage run by social worker Vijay Phalanikar, and will help cater to the tribals and backward communities in the surrounding areas.
“The situation in the area where adivasis (tribals) live is very bad. I can empathise with the situation as I have also been working for the last 13 years in areas like Gadchiroli, Ettapalli, Sironcha, Aheri and Melghat and run ’ekal’ schools in these areas. In these areas, education and health facilities are not up to the mark,” the Lok Sabha member from Maharashtra said.
Gadkari said when ventilators and BiPAPs (bilevel positive airway pressure) were sent to these areas during COVID-19 pandemic, doctors there did not know how to install a ventilator. ”We had to give training through video conferencing on how to use a BiPAP. We can sense how serious the situation is in these regions (about health facilities),” he said.
Referring to Dr B R Ambedkar’s birth anniversary on Thursday, Gadkari said today, when everyone is remembering Ambedkar, social and economic equality is possible only when the marginalised and oppressed classes get equal facilities in the education, health and financial sectors. He said trustees of the hospital, which he inaugurated, and the orphanage demanded better road connectivity in the area and he will provide it even if he has to “break rules”.
“There wouldn’t have been any problem had they made any other big demand, because I am authorised for work related to national highways. Though it does not fit into the rules (for his ministry to construct internal roads), I will get a one-and-half-km road (near the hospital) constructed by breaking the rules. As Mahatma Gandhi said, it is okay to break the rules if a poor person is benefitted,” the minister said.
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