When Told Him About Injustice Done To Me, Rahul Gandhi Replied “So What?”

Himanta Biswa Sarma is seen as a highly intelligent politician who has also mastered the art of governance. His achievements in the health and education sectors, which he has transformed dramatically, won’t be denied by even his fiercest critics. Assam’s Health Minister is the Chanakya of the North East, and proof of that lies in the fact that the top leadership of the party he joined recently promptly entrusted the responsibility of ensuring that the lotus blooms in North East India on his shoulders.

But he is also a person rooted in the traditions and culture of Assam. He is a doting father, a dutiful son, a caring brother and a loyal friend whose qualities of head and heart are vocally asserted by all those who know him well.

Himanta Biswa Sarma spoke to Swarajya of his entry into politics, his days in the Congress, his current role in the BJP, his passions, his work and his dreams over two long sessions that extended till the wee hours of the morning at his residence in Guwahati.

Excerpts

You have changed the public healthcare scenario in Assam. Tell us about your initiatives in this sector.

In July 2010 (when I was the health minister in Tarun Gogoi’s Congress government), I designed and launched a scheme for free treatment of children below 12 years suffering from congenital heart disease (CHD). This is one of the most important and innovative projects in healthcare not just in Assam, but also in India. We have tied up with Dr Devi Shetty’s Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) and send all CHD patients to NH in Bangalore where they are treated totally free of cost. We also bear the cost of transporting the patient and one guardian by air, the guardian’s stay in Bangalore and some other costs. A total of 5,350 children have benefitted from this over the last seven years and their cost of treatment at NH has come to over Rs 65 crore.

After I resigned from the Congress ministry, (Chief Minister) Tarun Gogoi halted the scheme, but due to immense public pressure, was forced to relaunch it. Of late, we are sending patients to NH in Kolkata and patients above two years of age are being treated at the NH facility in Guwahati.

Another scheme titled Sneha Sparsha Scheme was launched in April 2013 to cover children below 12 years of age in need of bone marrow, liver, renal and cochlear transplants, fitting of artificial limbs, specialised eye surgery and treatment of solid tumours and neurological disorders. Under this scheme, assistance of Rs 10 lakh is given to children suffering from leukaemia and thalassemia who require bone marrow transplants, Rs 5.35 lakh to those requiring cochlear transplants, Rs 16 lakh to children requiring liver transplants, Rs three lakh to children requiring renal transplants, Rs one lakh for cosmetic limbs and Rs 2.5 lakh for motorised artificial limbs, Rs one lakh for chemotherapy of children suffering from leukaemia, Rs 15,000 for specialised eye surgery and more for treatment of cancer-afflicted children. A total of 45 children have undergone bone marrow transplants, 11 have undergone liver transplants and 18 have undergone cochlear transplants till now. This scheme is for children from families with an annual income of up to Rs 2.5 lakh.

We conduct regular screening camps in our medical colleges and children found to be suffering from CHD and in need of liver and bone marrow transplants are identified and then sent for treatment. It costs the state exchequer anything between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 35 lakh for one child’s surgery. Apart from the children identified for treatment at the screening camps, we also take immediate action whenever a case of a child in need of treatment is brought to our notice.

What other initiatives have been taken by you in the healthcare sector?

In April 2008, we launched another major scheme to provide free chemotherapy to all cancer patients. More than 40,000 cancer patients have benefitted from this. In 2015, we launched the Assam Arygo Nidhi, a health assurance scheme for people belonging to low income groups who were reimbursed up to Rs 1.5 lakh for medical expenses. This amount was enhanced to Rs 2 lakh.

On 25 December this year, we will formally launch the Atal Amrit Abhiyan, which is an advanced health assurance scheme unlike any other in the country. Under this, a card would be given to members of all families whose income is up to Rs 5 lakh a year. A card will have a chip containing the cardholder’s biometric and other details embedded in it. A card holder will get free treatment up to Rs 2 lakh in any empanelled hospital, including superspeciality hospitals in the country, for 438 ailments and diseases under cancer, kidney, burns, cardiovascular, neurological and neonatal disciplines. Some other states have a similar scheme, but it covers a whole family instead of a single individual. Here, the ‘family floater’ principle will be followed; even if a member of a family of, say, five persons requires treatment of Rs 10 lakh, he or she will be eligible for it since the assurance of Rs 2 lakh per member will accrue to the affected member of the family.

Shri Ratan Tata was so impressed when he heard about this scheme that he readily offered a grant of Rs 562 crore for treatment of cancer patients from Assam. The Assam government and Tata Trust are now joining hands to raise Rs 1,400 crore for putting in place a comprehensive, three-tier grid for cancer treatment in Assam. Under this grid, district hospitals will conduct screening of cancer patients and administer chemotherapy, while the next tier of hospitals will administer radiotherapy as well and a highly specialised cancer treatment facility in Guwahati will deal with the complicated cases, including those requiring surgery.

We shall also register a Southeast Asian Cancer Care Society to facilitate treatment of cancer-afflicted patients from Southeast Asia in Assam. This will give a major leg-up to medical tourism in this state.

Apart from all these, Assam now provides free medicines to all who have undergone kidney transplants. I had noticed that people from poor families who had undergone kidney transplants could not afford the expensive medicines required after surgery. These medicines cost at least Rs 20,000 a month. Thus, their survival rates after transplant has been very low. So I decided to provide financial assistance of Rs 20,000 a month to all such patients. We are also providing medicines free of cost to thalassemia patients.

In 2009, we launched two schemes, one called ‘Majoni’ under which a fixed deposit of Rs 5,000 is credited in the name of a girl child soon after her birth (subject to a ceiling of two girls per family), and another called ‘Mamoni’ where 2nd and 3rd trimester patients are given a grant of Rs 500. In 2010, we launched ‘Morom’ under which attendants of patients in government hospitals were given Rs 75 a day. This was done since most of them are extremely poor and lose out on their daily earnings while attending to their near and dear ones. The ‘Mamata’ scheme was started in 2009 where, after delivery, a mother is given a hamper containing essentials for her newborn child.

Assam’s health infrastructure was in shambles and the state was one of the worst performers in state healthcare. What have you done to improve it?

For 60 years since Independence, Assam has just three medical colleges. I became the health minister in 2008 and within six years, I have opened three more government medical colleges in the state. Another medical college will start soon, construction works of three medical colleges started this year and it has been decided to establish two more medical colleges. So Assam will, in a few years, have 11 medical colleges. As soon as I took over, I established the Srimanta Sankardev University of Medical Sciences and appointed a vice chancellor to run it. This has led to streamlining of medical education in the state. Postgraduate courses have started at two more medical colleges and a cancer hospital – the only one in this part of the country that has a cyclotron producing isotopes – was inaugurated in Guwahati earlier this year.

Construction of 116 model hospitals was initiated in 2012 and 82 are functioning now while the rest will become operational soon. A total of 27 regional diagnostic centres have been set up all over the state. Assam now have 475 ambulances for ‘108’ intra-district emergency services (150 will be added to the fleet over the next two months) and 316 for the ‘102’ inter-district emergency services. We have 500 boat ambulances for the riverine areas and we have launched mobile medical units targeted at tea garden workers earlier this year

Assam Medical Corporation was established this year to streamline and provide total transparency to the purchase and distribution of medical and surgical consumables for public healthcare facilities and medical colleges in the state. In 2011, we started providing AICTE scales to teachers in all medical colleges. The retirement age of doctors was raised to 65 last year.

Assam is the only state where the family of a government employee who dies in service is provided his or her full salary till the time he would have retired. I started this earlier this year.

Education is another sector where Assam had been a laggard. What changes have you brought in here?

I became the education minister in 2011 and the first thing I realised was that the state of government schools had become pathetic. The last time teachers were recruited in government schools was at the turn of the century and since then, due to plethora of court cases, the recruitment process had been held up. Large-scale corruption, controversies and endless court cases filed by disgruntled candidates marked the process of recruitment of teachers in Assam since Independence. The whole process was very opaque.

I immediately made the whole process totally transparent by making it online without any human intervention. Candidates applied for posts online, filled in all the forms and their TET (teacher eligibility tests) scores as well as university examination marks and based on the composite scores, they got ranked. The only human interface was at the time of verifying their mark sheets and other credentials. I abolished the oral interviews in 2012. As a result, not a single dispute or controversy has arisen over the recruitment of one lakh school teachers under me. Another 35,000 are being appointed now.

A landmark initiative I launched this year in Assam was a replica of the Gunotsav that was launched by Shri Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat in 2009. This is a system of evaluating government primary and secondary schools, grading the teachers, developing awareness for the need for quality education amongst all stakeholders and building an environment of accountability. Everyone, from the chief minister, ministers, the chief secretary and the DGP, bureaucrats to police officers are drafted to visit one school each for a few days and interact very closely with the teacher and students, sit in the classes, inspect the school and its infrastructure, assess the teaching-learning method, and then grade the school according to a given set of parameters.

Over 50,000 schools with 48 lakh students have been assessed and graded so far. Prime Minister Modi tweeted about this and congratulated us. I have carried this grand project forward with some innovation. More than 2,000 schools have been graded in the A+ (the highest) category. I have launched a scheme called ‘Challenge’ under which one A+ school will be identified under every gram panchayat (there are 3,500 gram panchayats in Assam) and this school will be made into a model school that will offer better education and facilities than the local English medium private school. We will offer free uniforms, free breakfast and free books to the students of such schools, which will also be offered advanced infrastructure and teaching tools. The head teachers of these schools will be given the freedom to recruit whichever teacher from other government schools in their own schools that they want to.

Our mission is to ensure and help schools improve their grading. We want to see that a school graded in one category this year improves its ratings the next year and we also want to increase the number of model schools every year.

We are starting a scheme where we shall give scooties to the top 5,000 higher secondary passouts so that they can go to college for pursuing higher studies. We will start one Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Model College (offering science and commerce courses) in each of the 126 assembly constituencies in Assam and women’s colleges in each minority-dominated assembly constituency.

Apart from these major initiatives in health and education, what have been your achievements?

The population policy whose launch I stewarded is a landmark initiative in Assam. This was done with the objective of preserving the demographic balance in the state. Anyone with more than two children is now debarred from government jobs and benefits and from contesting elections to local bodies. Those who violate the legal age of marriage will also become ineligible for government jobs and benefits. This was necessary to discourage the high birth rate among the minorities that was posing a grave danger to the demographic balance in Assam. In the finance sector, Assam recorded the highest increase in tax collections (a 21 per cent increase) among all states last year and we ended the last fiscal with a Rs 3,000 crore surplus. Our spending, mostly on the social sector and infrastructure, has gone up by 35 per cent.

You have been in politics for so many years. What has been the high point in your political career till now?

There are always highs and lows in politics, but one high was when I returned to Guwahati after having met (Bharatiya Janata Party president) Amit Shah in New Delhi and having joined the BJP after 23 years in the Congress. I was not sure of how people of Assam would react to my joining the BJP. But the record crowds that greeted me at the Guwahati airport and who lined the road all the way from the airport to the state BJP headquarters really overwhelmed me. Few politicians can get that sort of welcome and adulation from the people. I had cruised into uncharted waters and was apprehensive, but the reception I received in Guwahati put all my doubts to rest and made me realise that I had taken the right decision. I realised the people were fully behind me. The response of the people was spontaneous; people came out of their houses and offices to cheer me and welcome me, they were ecstatic.

And what was a low point of your political career?

Congress president (Sonia Gandhi) deputed senior party leader Mallikarjun Kharge as the observer (at a show of strength) and 55 Congress MLAs demonstrated their total support for me while just 15 were with (then chief minister) Tarun Gogoi. Some MLAs remained neutral. But Sonia Gandhi ignored the wishes of the majority of the MLAs and retained Gogoi as chief minister. I then resigned from the Congress.

Sonia Gandhi then sent word to me that I should speak to Rahul Gandhi. She sent me Rahul Gandhi’s personal number. When I called up he invited me for a talk. I went to his residence and he took me to his inner chambers. He asked me why I had resigned from the Congress, I said because of the injustice done to me. “So what?” he asked me. He was interested in knowing how I had mustered the courage to challenge the decision of his mother to retain Gogoi. He wanted to know who was backing me. He wanted to know how I had managed the support of the MLAs and told me that I should have known that in the Congress, the will of the Gandhis prevails over everything else.

That was a day of acute disappointment and frustration for me.

Later, when rumours were rife about my joining the BJP, Rahul Gandhi asked me through one of the senior Congress leaders if the rumours were true. I told that Congress leader that my reply to Rahul Gandhi was: “so what?”After that, I refused to speak to him despite Ahmed Patel requesting me to do so many times.

What role does religion play in your life?

I equate religion with spirituality. In my daily life, I just pray a little bit in the morning, but in broader terms, religion is the sanskar taught to us by our elders. I am a firm believer in Sanatan Dharma and its tenets without any dilution. The Gita gives me strength and inspiration and is the bedrock of my beliefs and my governance.

How did you come into politics?

When I was in Class V, I got intricately involved with the anti-foreigners Assam agitation and from then on, it was a natural progression of sort into politics. We (my brothers and me) had never thought of politics as a career option. In fact, I was always interested in the legal profession because our father, right from the time we were very young, used to tell us what we would become. He would tell one brother he would become a doctor, another would become a professor, yet another would become an engineer and he would say that I would become a lawyer.

But due to circumstances and the influence of (former Assam chief minister) Hiteswar Saikia, I joined politics. I did become a lawyer and practised law in the Guwahati High Court, where I became the additional senior central government counsel. Had I not joined politics, I would have been a senior lawyer now.

Who is the role model in your personal life and in politics?

The single biggest influence in my life has been my father. In politics, I can say that I would not have come into politics that early had I not met (Hiteswar) Saikia. While I was in the Congress, there were many senior leaders I used to look up to. In the BJP, I got the opportunity to work very closely with Ram Madhav and Shah. And for the entire country today, our role model is Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

You have worked with prime minister Manmohan Singh and you are now seeing Modi also from very close quarters. What are the differences between the two?

Manmohan Singh is a gentleman, he is very polite and has a lot of affection towards me. I have shared a personal bond with him. When he used to come to Assam in the early 1990s (he was a Rajya Sabha MP from Assam), Saikia entrusted me with the task of taking care of Manmohan Singh.

But the problem with him is that he failed to deliver as Prime Minister. As Sanjaya Baru has written in his book, Manmohan wasn’t an independent prime minister. As Finance Minister, he was independent, but as prime minister, he was beholden to Sonia Gandhi for his post. His credo was that he owed everything to Sonia Gandhi. So he was not effective as a prime minister. Even when we used to meet him with problems about Assam, he used to advise us to take the problems to Madam (Sonia). Manmohan Singh as finance minister was much better than Manmohan SIngh as prime minister.

Modi, in stark contrast, is a self-made man and is fiercely independent. He is a hard task master. I haven’t got many opportunities to meet him, but on the few that I did, he came across as bold and decisive and a person who knows a subject and takes decisions fast. He knows what needs to be done and knows many things at the micro level. We had taken up the issue of oil royalty for Assam and before we could explain the issue to him, he held forth on it like a veteran. He is hands-on.

It would thus not be fair to compare the two since both are completely different personas.

You are reputed to be a very good administrator who knows the intricacies of the bureaucracy. How did you pick up that skill?

I have seen two chief ministers of Assam, Hiteswar Saikia and Prafulla Mahanta, from very close quarters from 1991 to 2000, the years of my political internship. Saikia was a very able and efficient administrator and knew how to get things done and negotiate the bureaucratic maze. I learnt a lot from him. When I became a minister in my first term as MLA in 2001, I was fortunate to have very seasoned and able bureaucrats to guide me and I learnt a lot from them too. But learning is a continuous process and through trial and error.

You joined the BJP from the Congress, which has a very different culture. Ow difficult was it for you to adjust within the BJP?

It wasn’t difficult at all because excluding me, my entire family – my father and my brothers – were closely associated with the Sangh Parivar. I thus knew many senior functionaries in the BJP and the Parivar. I was also involved in the Assam movement and many All Assam Students Union (AASU) leaders later joined the BJP. I know them well.

Also, both Madhav and Shah made things easy for me within the BJP. It did not take even 10 days for me to feel completely at home in the BJP.

How is the BJP’s outlook towards the North East vary from that of the Congress?

For the Congress, the North East is just another theatre of electoral politics. But to be frank, even before joining the BJP, I knew that the BJP understands Assam and North East better. This belief grew firmer after I joined the BJP.

I will take an example. I was in Raha in Nagaon district to attend an election meeting of Modi in 2014. I was talking to Modi and briefing him on local issues in Nagaon. I was stunned when he gave me a better perspective of local issues there. He told me that he had spent two to three days in each and every district of Assam.

Shah also knows this region very well. His grandfather took sanyas and spent his last days in Kamakhya. Shah had spent many days during critical phases of his life at Kamakhya and he told me that his parents believed he (Shah) was a boon to his parents from Maa Kamakhya. His parents had asked Devi for a son and Shah was born to them. So he has a deep connect with Kamakhya and Assam.

The ‘Ekatmata Shloka’ that is recited every morning in RSS shakhas makes a mention of Assam and its heroes. For the BJP, Assam is not a political theatre but a mission ground to bring this land back from the clutches of illegal Bangladeshis. That is why I feel at home in the BJP. For the Congress, Assam was just another state to be added to the electoral kitty.

The Assam movement defined your brand of politics. How does that fit in now that you are with a party with a nationalistic outlook?

As student activists and participants in the Assam movement, our collective dream was of a prosperous Assam. That remains central to my political ideology. At the core of my heart, I am an Assamese first and Assamese sub-nationalism runs through my veins. But even when I joined a national party (Congress) from a regional party (Asom Gana Parishad) in 1993, I was of the firm belief that regionalism and Assamese sub-nationalism is not the antithesis of nationalism. And the BJP allows sub-nationalism to flourish because of the firm belief that it strengthens nationalism. The BJP’s view of nationalism is not monolithic and exclusive.

You have been working in Assam for the past 16 years. What next?

Over the past two years, I have been speaking about the problems and issues affecting the North East as a whole. I have been speaking about removing regional disparities. All states have to be equals in terms of infrastructure and other facilities in order to compete as equals. Development of all states constitutes India’s development. India does not figure in the global top 10 because of our less developed states. Our national goal should thus be to develop the under-developed states. I have been highlighting this at national platforms.

Developed states have a special duty and obligation towards less developed states. There should, for instance, be a Maharashtra-Meghalaya synergy in which Maharashtra takes a special interest in and helps in the development of Meghalaya. Gujarat can take up Arunachal Pradesh’s development. The north east is geographically disadvantaged and so states that have a geographical advantage have to develop synergies with geographically disadvantaged states for their development. That way, India’s development can be fast-tracked.

You are very close to your children, but how much time can you really devote to them?

I have hit upon a unique way to balance my commitments to politics and family. I give time to both. After my day’s work, I get back home late in the evening and that is when I spend time with my family. Like me, they have also got into the habit of going to bed late. Late evenings are my family time. Both my children are boarders in their schools and my wife and I divide time for them. But when they come home during their vacations, I try to spend as much time with them as possible.

How do you unwind?

I really can’t unwind in Assam. There are too many demands on my time and energy here. So I go away to some other destination, nearly always a place of pilgrimage, check into a hotel and sleep for two to three days. I return fresh and rejuvenated. But of late, I have started playing badminton for one and half hours every evening from 10 pm and that is one way that I unwind. Spending time with my kids when they come home is another way I unwind.

Which is your favourite destination?

I don’t have one favourite destination. I am fascinated, though, by the beauty of the Brahmaputra and whenever I can, I love to spend time on its banks or taking a ride down the river.

I have also been going on pilgrimages to places like Amarnath, Vaishno Devi, Gangotri etc every year since I was in high school. I make it a point to go on at least a couple of pilgrimages every year.