Letter from the Editor
A peculiar contradiction of the centrally planned Indian economy is that it is characterised by pervasive shortages and inter-sectoral imbalances. The demand for food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare and transport, among a plethora of other goods and services, is far greater than supply. Moreover in direct negation of the very purpose of central planning, the Indian economy manifests glaring imbalances. This doesn’t necessarily imply that central planning is doomed to failure per se. In Russia, which was the model for newly independent India’s central planning, all children are in primary school, and if you read a statistical box item of this issue’s cover story, you’ll discover that contemporary Russia has the highest ratio of qualified doctors per 100,000 population worldwide.
Quite clearly it is central planning, Indian style and its natural offspring licence-permit-quota raj which is responsible for the dreadful mess in Indian medical education, the subject matter of our cover story in this first issue of the year 2008. Because it’s been heavily and hamfistedly controlled by governments at the Centre and in the states for over half a century, medical education in India is a complex maze characterised by a bewildering array of government subsidies and private sector cross-subsidisation schemes. As a result, against the annual cost of medical education provision estimated by the Medical Council of India at Rs.4.15 lakh per year, some privileged medical students pay a mere Rs.250 per year for their education. At the other end of the spectrum, students admitted into upscale private medical colleges (which outnumber government institutions) pay Rs.8-10 lakh per year.
Against this backdrop and given that very few medical students pay the actual cost of their education, surely they should be made to pay back their dues to society? To his credit Union minister for health Anbumani Ramadoss — an unsavoury character by all accounts — has addressed this issue, instead of fudging it like all his predecessors in office. His solution is a year’s compulsory service in under-serviced rural India for all medical students. Unsurprisingly, long accustomed to subsidised education without accountability — almost 50 percent of graduates of the country’s show-piece All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi (annual tuition fee: Rs.250) flee abroad to prosper — they have staged angry nationwide protests against the minister’s proposal. In this first issue of the new year, we present the arguments for and against compulsory rural service for medical students.
Alas, in the centrally planned Indian economy, teacher education and training is also as archaic and messy, with a proposal to abolish the National Council of Teacher Education (estb.1995) recently recommended by a high-powered committee. Under the Union government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (Education For All) initiative which envisages all children in the age group six-14 in school and staying the course until class VIII, the country’s school-going population is set to rise exponentially. Yet the country’s 8,000 teacher training colleges churn out a mere 8 lakh poorly trained school teachers annually. In our special report feature assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen examines alternatives to resolve this ballooning problem, which threatens to negate 21st century India’s newly-discovered demographic advantage.
Happy New Year!
Dilip Thakore