Ashok Hans  took up the issue with the Ministry of Social Justice and found a willing supporter in Menaka Gandhi, the Minister in Charge. She visited Orissa and the Centre and agreed that it should up set up by SMRC. In all, four Regional Spinal Injury Centres (Gauhati, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh and Bareilly) were agreed upon. Though the Chief Minister Sri Naveen Pattnaik was keen, the government did not show any interest and maybe did not want an NGO to run it though ISIC was also a registered society. The Government in Delhi started a process to move it to Bangalore. He had to go back to Delhi for discussions and Mrs. Gandhi agreed knowing that, Ashok  would not let go.

She called Mr. Pattnaik while he was sitting in his office and he congratulated me that the RSIC was sanctioned, and we could start it as early as we wanted and the government would support us. Once sanctioned the government decided that it should go the SCB Medical Hospital and not SMRC. For the next one year I had to undergo various pressures from some levels of government and the newly set up RSIC and we finally had to close down our own spinal injury centre, though it had worked tremendously well.  My involvement with RSIC was also limited to being an advisory member.

Though RSIC was handed over to SCB Hospital, we had an extraordinary good model  developed over the last ten years.

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