The surging costs of medical education in India have seemingly acted as a boon for countries that provide cheap medical education facilities. In a recent trend, many medical aspirants from India are finding countries like China, Russia, Philippines, Ukraine and Nepal as better alternatives to their motherland for pursuing their dream of becoming doctors. Moreover statistics also indicate a steady surge in numbers in the upcoming years.
Equations of inequality
For a student hailing from a middleclass family who could not get a seat in any government college, medical costs soar astronomically for him starting from that very moment. The reason being the only pathways to realization of his medical aspirations are the one and only private medical colleges. But distressingly enough, securing a single medical seat in these colleges can cost a fortune often much beyond the limits of even a higher middle class family leave alone the lower middle and lower classes. Figuratively speaking, any such seat would cost a minimum of 50 lakhs which even crosses the 1 crore barrier in many cases. Comparatively countries like China which itself is the single largest destination for such students would charge somewhere between 15-25 lakhs for the completion of the entire course which is lesser than half of what the Indian colleges demand.
Why the disparity in figures?
The astronomical cost of private medical seats in India is a subject of wonder for many across the nation. Insane capitation fees charged by the medical institutes leave any able minded individual dumbfounded with the belligerence and superciliousness with which they enact their financial objectives. It isn’t rocket science to understand that an academic seat never costs an institution to the tune of scores of lakhs whatsoever they may teach or provide the students. The capitalist ideologies of the institutes to cash in the medical aspirations of rich Indian students is continued unabated without vigilance or cessation attempts from apex bodies like MCI and the union government. Such murderous attempts to rob one of his savings are unheard of in the medical institutes of such nations which can henceforth provide the aforesaid pathway to success which the homeland institutes don’t.
Home return ‘gift’
The Medical Council of India (MCI) is bound and determined to make the inbound procedure of Foreign Medical Graduates (FMG) as herculean and irksome as possible. They are made to run from pillar to post in order to become affiliated doctors in India. The exams held in this regard are intentionally made tough to crack which often include postgraduate questions for undergraduates. Exams are also deliberately held only in Delhi and nowhere else. MCI has devised such hurdles as if to dissuade them from coming back home. Experts think that indirectly these are ploys to help private medical colleges so that students are discouraged from plying abroad to realize their medical dreams and forced to opt for private medical colleges.
What the future beholds
Even the arduously diligent efforts by the MCI to dissuade the FMGs could not dampen the spirits of the Indian students who are increasingly pouring out for medical studies abroad. The incredibly low education costs in such nations will continue to attract Indian students till the private institutes exist on Indian soil and continue to charge exorbitant fees. The number of FMGs sitting in the evaluation tests in 2012 was 14000 which are expected to rise in the coming years and who knows where they will stand in the future?