Sounds untrue and a bit amazing? On August 8, 2017, Swarup Ranjan Mishra, a soft-spoken medical doctor was elected as the member of Parliament (MP) for Kesses Constituency, Uasin Gishu County, becoming the only non-local to win a seat in Rift Valley.
Mishra joined his Seme counterpart, James Nyikal, Nyamira Deputy Governor, James Ondochi and Boni Khalwale as medical doctors who tossed their hats into the political ring.
The Kesses lawmaker, who has been nicknamed Kiprop, is the founder of Mediheal Group of Hospitals, which has branches in Kenya, Rwanda and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That Mishra leads a flamboyant life is no secret; owning a fleet luxury vehicles, houses, high end watches and over 200 suits.
In a TV interview, the legislator revealed that he owns 18 phones. When asked how he managed to keep tabs on all of them, he said that it was not as difficult as it seemed likening it to having many wives.
“I have 18 phones but I only carry eight. Just like when people marry 10 wives, or have 16 children they will always keep tabs on them,” the Kesses legislator stated.
Mishra noted that he led three lives: a politician, academician and businessman. However, he noted that he does not mix business and politics, describing the latter as humanitarian work, evidenced by his philanthropy.
“Business took me into humanitarian work by involving myself into politics. However, I always keep politics and business very separate. I am a hard core businessman, but a very generous politician” he stated.
For instance, in August 2018, he started a drive where, he would give free cows to every home in Kesses that did not have one. He also secured 50 scholarships for his constituents to study in India in January 2020.
Unknown to many, Mishra, only moved to Kenya in 1994. He was born in 1965 in India to a family practising medicine, with his grandfather a traditional medicine man and his father a pharmacist. Following in their footsteps, Mishra signed up for a degree in medicine, majoring in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
He met his wife., Pallavi Mishra, who is also an obstetrician /gynaecologist while in collage. The two moved in Ireland to further their careers, and later to Melbourne University Hospital, Australia. They worked for one year without pay due to financial constrains and decided to pursue greener pastures.
The MP and his wife moved to Kenya when Pallavi got a job in Eldoret. While awaiting confirmation for an opening in Australia, Mishra secured his first salaried job at the Moi University where he was a lecturer in the Department of Reproductive Health, College of Health Sciences.
“When I got lectureship at Moi University, I got so excited. In the first six months in Kenya, we did not have a car. We had to walk five kilometres to Eldoret to buy food, ” he revealed.
Mishra and his wife did private practice, which opened other doors that would enable him travel around the world and made a fortune out of it . He noticed a gap in the medical industry and specifically in fertility care, which led him to start Mediheal.
“We were both young and we unexpectedly made money. After seven years, I became bored of waking up in the night to go an deal with emergencies and decided to venture into business with the money we made.
“Fertility was a new sub speciality in medicine at that time. Because we were setting up for the first time, we set up as a fertility centre but made it was a fully fledged hospital with other departments,” he noted.
Kiprop stated that he joined politics in order to use it as a platform to better help people, a continuation of what he did as an individual through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Notably, members of his inner circle were against the idea.
“When I joined politics, people thought it was a joke. All my best friends and well wishers discouraged me and urged me to change my decision, but when I won, things were different,” he revealed.
