Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday that adequate facilities are not available in the field of education and health in rural areas of the country, but the situation is improving. He was speaking at the inauguration of a multi-specialty charitable hospital in Sinhagad Fort area. “In our country, we do not have adequate facilities available in the education and health sectors in rural areas. There are facilities in urban areas, but the situation is not so good in rural areas.
The situation in rural areas is that if school building is available, there are no teachers. He said that if teachers are available then there is no school building. “If both things (the teacher and the school building) are there, then the student is missing, and if all three elements are there, then there is no education,” he said. The Minister for Road Transport and Highways said that although this is the condition of schools in rural areas, it is improving now.
“As far as clinics (health facilities) are concerned, the situation is similar in rural areas as well and we all have experienced this fact very well during COVID-19. There are 115 aspirational districts (in the country) which are socially, economically and educationally backward and the situation there is very bad,” Gadkari said. The hospital that Gadkari inaugurated is built on the premises of ‘Apala Ghar’, an orphanage run by social activist Vijay Phalanikar, and will help cater to tribals and backward communities in the surrounding areas.
“The situation in the area where adivasis (tribals) live is very bad. I can sympathize with the situation as I have also been working in areas like Gadchiroli, Ettapalli, Sironcha, Aheri and Melghat for the past 13 years and run ‘Ekal’ schools in these areas. In these areas, education and health facilities are not up to the mark,” said the Lok Sabha member from Maharashtra.
Gadkari said that when ventilators and BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) were sent to these areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, the doctors there did not know how to apply the ventilator. “We had to train through video conferencing how to use a BiPAP. We can understand how serious the situation is in these areas (regarding health facilities),” he said.
Referring to the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar on Thursday, Gadkari said that today when everyone is remembering Ambedkar, social and economic equality is possible only when the deprived and oppressed sections get equal facilities in education, health and financial sectors. . He said the hospital he inaugurated, and the orphanage’s trustees, demanded better road connectivity in the area and that he would provide it, even if he had to “break the rules”.
“If they had made some other big demand, there would have been no problem as I am authorized to do the work related to the national highways,” he said. Though it doesn’t fit the rules (for building internal roads for his ministry), I will break the rules and build a one and a half kilometer road (near the hospital). As Mahatma Gandhi said, it is okay to break the rules if a poor person benefits.
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