In a sector that must be driven by the core values of societal service by persons and institutions practising impeccable honesty and high integrity, we have unfortunately witnessed the squalid demonstration of the 'demand-and-supply' mechanism for netting huge profits for individuals. It did not matter that the country's student population suffered dearly as they could not access medical education with the same ease that was possible for friends pursuing other fields such as engineering.
In sad and simple terms, an artificial scarcity was created in medical seats and this was perpetuated so as to make a few individuals and institutions to prosper through heaps of corruption and capitation fees, while the rest of the country suffered.
Those lecturing about social justice must check out to see what increase has taken place over the years in the number of medical seats made available for the aspiring, hardworking and intelligent young men and women in our country. There is no use talking about social justice, state autonomy and shifting of education from concurrent list to the state list without going through the issues that really bog down quality medical education for our children.
There are only about 57,000 medical seats available in the government and private medical colleges across our country. Over 12 lakh candidates had taken the NEET in 2007 and about 50 per cent of them qualified. So, how do we distribute these 57,000 available seats among the six lakh NEET-qualified candidates? That's the reason behind all the agitation, debating and discussing now happening - more in Tamil Nadu because our state board students are found to be lagging.
Medical education is very costly compared to other professional courses because the college has to run a hospital as well. At present, there is no help from the government to run such a hospital and that's why private medical colleges charge so much. The lone exception is the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore. Because CMC has been a well-known hospital, they earn in the hospital and spend on the medical college -not vice versa as in the case of the other medical colleges. That's the reason why CMC charges only a token a fee from its students, even less than what the government medical colleges collect as fees.
Looking at this year's Neet results and finding that in Tamil Nadu, as many as 25 out of the total 32 districts have done better than the last year - when there was no NEET and medical admissions were based on the plus-two marks - what we must understand is that if our students are given coaching and their school syllabus is upgraded, they will score high in these all-India entrance exams.
Also, the government should get involved in a big way to help the poor and the middle class students. They should be enabled to pursue their studies partly through scholarships and partly through institutional loans.
I had recently been to Zhengzhou University in China, where I found that of the 600 medical students, 400 were Chinese and the rest allotted to foreigners. And most of the foreigners were Indians, a majority from south India. That's not all. There could be about 30,000 medical seats throughout China and an equal number in Russia. And there are the CIS countries (former Soviet Republics), such as Kazakhstan, getting a huge number of Indian students, many of them from Tamil Nadu and they suffer terrible issues of climate and food just to be able to chase those medical degrees without having to spend a fortune that's needed for a seat in a private medical college in India. And when they return home, their medical degrees are not even valid here.
There was a survey of the quality of school education undertaken in 2009 by the OECD, the 34 economically developed countries. They allowed other countries too to participate in this survey. India ranked 72 among the total 73 participants, just a rung better than Kazakhstan. And Kazakhstan is where plenty of our students head for to get their medical degrees!
Why would these students go to all those distant lands to pursue medicine, suffer through harsh winters and bad food and come back with such degrees? Why can't we increase the number of medical seats and make it easier for our students to pursue their degrees right here?
These are all issues that must be seriously tackled by the Medical Council of India but then, the MCI is the worst among all the governing bodies for education in our country. Fortunately, the present government is trying to change it. Let's hope better days are ahead.
