The strange case of 74 NRI students
Why should govt run a medical college?
By Subhash Kak
Rediff
January 11, 2005
The expulsion, last month, of 74 NRI students from two
medical colleges in West Bengal on orders of the Supreme
Court, highlights an important national problem regarding
professional education that requires urgent resolution.
There is a tremendous demand for seats in professional
colleges. But most of these colleges are run by the
government, which simply does not have the resources and
ideas to respond to this demand.
The government has not even met the challenge of how to
attract competent faculty to teach in a medical college
when their salaries are much lower than those of doctors
in a private hospital. This is the same problem as that
of getting capable professors to teach in engineering
colleges and management schools, when they are worth many
times more in the private sector.
Instead of clearly defining the problem and then seeing
how it might be solved, the government, at the state
level or at the Centre, has taken ad hoc decisions, which
are not only generally unfair and inconsistent, they
increase the opportunity for the bureaucracy to indulge
in corruption. It must be added that this is not an
ideological issue; the BJP has been as much to blame as
the Congress and the CPM.
To increase revenue for the medical schools and also to
satisfy demand for medical seats from the NRI, in 2003,
the West Bengal government announced a quota for NRI-
sponsored and foreign students provided the Medical
Council of India approved the increase in number of seats
in the state's seven medical colleges. These students had
to pay a fee of Rs 1 lakh every six months, as against 12
rupees per month of the regularly admitted students. The
government also proposed that the tuition for regular
students would go up to Rs 850 per month.
But the students in the NRI quota did not have to pass
the Joint Entrance Examination, and they required only 50
per cent marks in the science group in their higher
secondary examination! This standard was much lower than
that of the JEE, and not exactly in accordance with the
ideals of meritocracy. The government admitted 104 NRI
students to two medical colleges, which have 200 seats.
The Opposition parties called this admission-for-cash
scheme a sell-out to the rich.
Then a group of 16 boys and girls -- who passed the Joint
Entrance Examination but were denied admission in medical
colleges -- filed a petition in the high court against
the NRI quota.
The Calcutta high court soon ruled against the NRI quota.
Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya responded by
announcing that 'NRI students will complete their course
come what may.' The government appealed to the Supreme
Court, where it argued that the quota fees were to raise
funds for medical education. This was disingenuous since
the government could have charged foreign students a
higher fee, while insisting that they satisfy the same
admission requirements as other students.
The Supreme Court did not buy the argument, and it
slashed the NRI quota from 50 percent to 15 in the two
medical colleges where the cash-for-seats scheme was
implemented, leading to the expulsion of the 74 students.
From the point of view of the expelled students, who have
already spent five months in their medical colleges, the
situation is a disaster, one that is not of their making.
They are right to be bitter and many of them are on
hunger strike. The Bengal government owes them
compensation for their ruined careers.
I don't blame the justices of the Supreme Court. They
were intervening in an impossible situation because what
the government of West Bengal had done was wrong. But the
court's ruling found no fault with the idea of the quota
scheme, only with the size of the quota. It did not say
what it ought to have said: the West Bengal government --
and this is true of other states also -- has no business
running a medical college.
The government's bureaucracy does not have the expertise
to micromanage professional education. It should cede
authority for running these colleges to autonomous
professional bodies, which, free from political
pressures, would be able to examine the issues of
revenue, number of admission seats, and salaries for
professors, and implement appropriate solutions.
Personally, I think that the currently sanctioned number
of medical seats is not enough to satisfy the demand,
both internal and international. Since the government
does not have the resources to establish new medical
colleges, it should allow the private sector to enter the
picture. This may also lead to healthy rivalry between
the two sectors that could provide impetus for reform in
government-run professional colleges.
If the government in West Bengal, as in other states,
withdrew from the administration of professional
colleges, and instead concentrated on the problem of the
primary and secondary education in government schools, it
would shift the focus away to services for the poorer
sections in the cities and the rural areas.
It is uniquely true of India that the left and the right
are generally agreed regarding state control and
centralisation. This is an ideological issue for the
Marxists, whereas the right's approach is a consequence
of the false theory that India was defeated by the
British because its institutions were not centralised.
In truth, as Noam Chomsky reminds us in Understanding
Power, all successful economies are state-coordinated.
For example, American capital-intensive private
agriculture is subsidised by the state; American private
universities are also heavily supported by government
research grants. Privatising a part of medical education
does not mean that the government loses the ability to
direct medical education; it merely transfers the
administration to professionals.
One hopes that the expulsion of the NRI medical students
on the order of the Supreme Court may just lead to an
examination of the many unquestioned assumptions
regarding the powers and the obligations of the state in
India. But in a system where the State has been equated
to the power of the bureaucracy, it seems like a long
shot.
More at:
http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/jan/12kak.htm
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"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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