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Told Tata once that RSS does not discriminate: Gadkari
PUNE Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said, that industrialist Ratan Tata had once asked him, if hospital named after late RSS founder K B Hedgewar will serve non-Hindus, to which the minister responded saying Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) does not discriminate on the basis of religion
PUNE Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said, that industrialist Ratan Tata had once asked him, if hospital named after late RSS founder K B Hedgewar will serve non-Hindus, to which the minister responded saying Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) does not discriminate on the basis of religion.
“A hospital named after late RSS chief K B Hedgewar was being inaugurated in Aurangabad and I was a minister in the state government then. A senior RSS functionary expressed his wish that the hospital be inaugurated by Ratan Tata, and asked me to help,” the minister said while sharing an anecdote from the time when he was a Maharashtra cabinet minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP government in mid-1990s.
He was speaking after inaugurating a charitable hospital at the Sinhgad road in Pune.
“Upon reaching the hospital, Tata asked if the hospital is only for people from the Hindu community. I asked him ‘why do you think so’. He immediately replied, ‘because it belongs to the RSS’.
“I told him that the hospital is for all communities, and no such thing (discrimination on the basis of religion) happens in the RSS,” the union minister said. He then explained several things to Tata and the latter “became very happy”, Gadkari added.
On health facilities in rural areas of India, Gadkari said, the situation is improving.
“In our country, we do not have enough facilities available in the 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.
