AERIAL VIEW
It is not just the percentage or the money; the whole issue is of the faulty reservation policy wherein a person who gets just around 50 or 60 per cent marks gets the seat due to the age-old reservation criteria, a deserving student like the Karnataka student who died in Ukraine could not make it despite getting 97 p.c in 10+2. On the other hand, a reserved category student, even if his parents are millionaires, walks away with the seat. So who is responsible for the situation?
If the student who has achieved 97 percent wants to pursue medical students, why would any parent say no? They will obviously encourage them to study abroad and try to get them any seat available anywhere, no matter how much money they have to spend. Isn’t it?
While reservation remains the main hindrance in getting quality medical professionals in India, there is no intent from any government to increase the number of medical colleges
SURAJ NANDREKAR
Editor, Goemkarponn
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has various lessons for countries worldwide. While the United States has slapped several sanctions on Russia, including the European Union & NATO countries barring Russia from SWIFT transactions, India has its own set of lessons to learn.
First and foremost, the death of a medical student in Ukraine has thrown up billion-dollar question, Why are Indian students forced to go abroad for medical studies?
Why can a country of 1.4 billion people not have enough medical colleges to accommodate deserving students?
We all know how much one has to shell out for an MBBS degree in private colleges, wherein the management quota is sold at whopping crores if a student just misses the cut at the NEET examinations.
It is not just the percentage or the money; the whole issue is of the faulty reservation policy wherein a person who gets just around 50 or 60 per cent marks gets the seat due to the age-old reservation criteria, a deserving student like the Karnataka student who died in Ukraine could not make it despite getting 97 p.c in 10+2. On the other hand, a reserved category student, even if his parents are millionaire, walks away with the seat. So who is responsible for the situation?
If the student who has achieved 97 per cent want to pursue medical students, why would any parent say no? They will obviously encourage them to study abroad and try to get them any seat available anywhere, no matter how much money they have to spend. Isn’t it?
While reservation remains the main hindrance in getting quality medical professionals in India, there is no intent from any government to increase the number of medical colleges.
Development does not necessarily mean wider roads, flyovers, bridges etc. human development or quality education also has to be the priority considering that students from India today are leading the global multinational companies like Google etc.
But the politicians in India would never understand this as their children, no matter what, are all studying in prestigious universities across the globe as they have the money they have accumulated looting the poor people. So spending a few crores really does not bother shelling out a few crores.
In Goa, we all know where the children of Health Minister Vishwajit Rane are, and many others are studying.
While their daughters and sons are studying abroad, the ministers like Vishwajit Rane and others do not bother what pain the poor parents who cannot afford this go through as prestigious colleges in India or Goa deny their deserving students admissions.
Consider this; Goa Medical College is the only medical institution that has an intake of 150 medical seats and a few PG seats.
Goa has recently started new district hospitals in north and south Goa, besides the huge Super Speciality hospital in Bambolim. While there is an infrastructure, there is a severe dearth of doctors in these hospitals, and as such, the three hospitals are not being put to optimum use.
On the backdrop of all this, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane wants a give government premises at SGDH to a private medical college. Isn’t this insane? Why can’t the GMC manage another few seats there, or the Goa government can start a totally new medical college there?
Rane wants to give the premises to a private college so that management makes truckloads of money charging capitation fees to poor Goans students, and he too gets some benefit from it.
We have learned from Ukraine that the politicians force our bright students to move out of the State and the country to pursue future studies.
We need development, but at the same time we lost need better education and quality health care. Hope our politicians understand someday so that the Ukraine-like situation does not arise in the future.
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