In a press briefing held at Congress Party headquarters, the party's spokesperson Abhishek Sanghvi told media persons that Pawar was being given the dual responsibility of agriculture and health ministry because of his grand vision of making India a healthy country. "Shri Sharad Pawar is a man of vision and ideas far exceeding the limited brief of his portfolios in the cabinet. He has holistic vision of India as a healthy country and he realizes that this vision can be truly realized only when he can control the diet of all Indians."
According to Sanghvi, Pawar was already working in his capacity as agriculture minister to ensure that Indians eat only healthy food. "Under the dynamic leadership of Shri Sharad Pawar, agriculture ministry has taken measures to increase prices of unhealthy food items like sugar and salt to ensure that Indians consume less of these harmful, poisonous products.""Shri Sharad Pawar has very correctly diagnosed that consuming too much sugar can cause diabetes, a serious health condition that effects nearly 40 to 45 percent of our young population while excess salt intake results in high blood pressure, another serious health problem that effects large sections of both younger and older population of the country. By allowing increase in the prices of sugar, he has considerably brought down the consumption of sugar and done more for the health of the country than the health ministry. Hence our Prime Minister has decided to reward Mr. Pawar by giving him the charge of health ministry." the spokesperson told the media.
"Being health minister will give Shri Pawar regular and total access to all data and statistics relating to impact of various food items on different health conditions which will allow him to figure out which agricultural food products negatively affects the health of our country. Instead of just issuing alerts about possible rise in prices, as a minister in charge of country's health, he will have the authority to ask the agriculture ministry to take measures to ensure rise in prices of harmful food products. The high cost of such commodities would act as a deterrent to Indian consumers and ensure drastic reduction in the consumption of such food products.” Sanghvi added.
Apart from agriculture and health portfolios, as a former chairman of BCCI and as current president of Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), Pawar also has a stake in Indian sports. Speculation is rife in political circles that he may also be asked to head the Sports ministry. As a single head of three separate yet connected ministries, Pawar will be able to ensure that India eats proper food, stays fit, healthy and disease-free and as a consequence achieves excellence in the sports field too.
(Contributed by Anshul, Onionuttapam News)
