The mafia ruling the medical education system are political heavyweights with humongous clout and tremendous wealth to not only influence but also to determine lucrative decisions. This enables them to flourish and further tighten their octopus grip on the lives of the hapless student community, writes former IAS officer V.S.Pandey
On our 78th Independence Day, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a salient announcement from the ramparts of the Red Fort that 75000 medical seats would be added in the next five years. Why only 75000 seats? Why not 7.5 lakh seats? What is the rationale behind this number? Why continue with this huge scarcity of seats? These questions remain unanswered.
The medical MBBS seats available in our country today are around one lakh or so as per published data. Imagine the plight of an astronomical 24 lakh boys and girls who have labored prodigiously, investing their youth, precious time and resources -only to find themselves amongst the list of those who failed to cross the threshold. The ill effects of this tragic scenario is that these bright aspirants, wanting to become a part of the medical fraternity, are left with no option but to seek opportunities in nations all across the globe- spending millions which their parents can ill afford. Chilling narratives of land being sold, educational loans from sharks, struggling to make ends meet abroad make both admission and medical education a never ending nightmare for the students and their burdened families. The sudden eruption of wars has bedeviled this scenario further even endangering these young lives. Nowadays, whenever wars break out anywhere, rescuing and safely evacuating the large contingent of Indian medical students becomes a pressing national issue forcing the government to organize rescue operations at a great cost.
None are willing to see the elephant in the room. The basic question arises – why does such an acute paucity of seats still exist? Why are Indian students constantly forced to seek admissions in foreign medical colleges? There is a deafening silence! None are willing to fight the mafiosi.
The mafia ruling the medical education system are political heavyweights with humongous clout and tremendous wealth to not only influence but also to determine lucrative decisions. This enables them to flourish and further tighten their octopus grip on the lives of the hapless student community. Has anyone heeded the significant fact -why is there no paucity in the coveted seats for engineering students? Why are desperate engineering students not rushing to foreign lands for education? Why are ample seats available for them, at home, itself? Why don’t they need to be rescued from the grip of sharks abroad? The answer is simple- during the period year 2000 to 2004, the government decided to decimate the clout of the engineering college mafias and facilitated an enormous expansion of engineering education seats. While in the year 1999, there were roughly 1.30 lakh seats in our country, it was increased four-fold within a span of four years by policy interventions. Stern action against prevalent corruption in regulatory bodies like AICTE etc. was also undertaken. The mafiosi collapsed. The available engineering seats stand at above 20 lakhs today, because of the initiatives taken back then. Today our IT professionals are achieving salient successes globally and making our nation enormously proud. At that time also the unscrupulous lobbyists had raised the bogey of there being a shortage of good teachers and argued that an increase in intake would dangerously lower the quality of engineering education. To resolve these concerns, along with ensuring the expansion of seats in engineering education, programmes like National Programme for Tecnology Enhanced Learning ( NPTEL), National Programme for Quality Text Books , launch of several education channels, expanding the access of internet in educational institutions etc. to name a few, were initiatives that were successfully launched and implemented in a short span of time.
I was a part of this exercise and of these overdue reforms as I was working in the HRD Ministry, now Education Ministry. The opponents of these reforms were either novices- having no idea of how to remedy the dire situation or had a vested interest in continuing with the status quo. It was the government which was responsible for addressing the pressing issue and it acted promptly and delivered. Today we, as a nation, can proudly assert that every boy/ girl who aspires to become an engineer, can become one as there are a sufficient number of seats available. The nation has ensured that none will have to shell out lakhs and rush to foreign shores.
Why does medical education still remain stifled under the avaricious clutches of the mafiosi who have been ruling the roost for decades now and whose nefarious influence is still unchecked and unhindered. Governments change but the malevolent influence of these influential supra powerful dons does not. Whether it is the Congress, Janata Party, Lok Dal, BJP, UPA or NDA in its various avatars- not one has dared to even speak out about the mess in the medical education scenario, leave alone cleaning it up and correcting it.
An elementary question for our rulers, of all hue and colors, is- when 24 lakh boys and girls harbor the aspiration of become doctors and are willing to work hard, are eagerly ready to spend their time, energy and money, why are there only one lakh MBBS seats? Will any politician, who has been part of the ruling class now or formerly, answer this critical and very elementary question?
Our nation rightly takes enormous pride in having dismantled the license permit raj. But still allowing the continuous menacing control of the grant of medical seats and shrewdly ensuring that a chronic shortage of seats always remains so that their cronies can harvest the immense benefits and become billionaires- is this not a continuation of the defunct licensing raj and that too of the evil medical mafiosi? Why are policies still not being made keeping our student community at the center? Why are our governments always eager to heed the bogus hackneyed argument of shortage of faculty and expansion leading to fall in standards – when both these opinions stand conclusively demolished in the expansion of engineering education and as significantly apparent in the outstanding success of our students globally.
The present central government, led by our Prime Minister can solve the problem of shortage of doctors in our nation by ensuring that there are at least 20 lakh MBBS, MD,MS etc. seats in our country. This will ensure not only that we overcome the crippling shortage of doctors in India, but also that no student will have to desperately run abroad for medical education -thus saving our precious foreign exchange, and also avoiding the extortions undergone and the torture and agony of leaving one’s native land. It will also enable India to take a giant lead in the medical field as it has brilliantly done in software engineering. This critical policy intervention -requisite expansion of medical seats- is exigent now.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary Government of India)
