Not a NEET way to do it

While quality has to be enusred in medical education, it must be made more accessible

Alok Tiwari

The apparent irregularities in National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to undergraduate medical courses in the country has presented the first crisis to the new central government. The scandal blew up barely as the government had taken office. The way it has responded to the crisis shows that it is very much a Modi 3.0 government and not an NDA government in true sense. It has shown the same lack of empathy and mulish disregard for the public opinion that have been the hallmark of prime minister’s first two terms.

Whether it was farmers’ agitation or protest regarding CAA or the violence in Manipur, Modi government responded by simply ignoring them. It is almost as if the prime minister and his coterie believe responding to any public agitation is a sign of weakness. So it was when it became apparent all was not well with the way medical entrance exam was conducted this year. If anyone thought that the debacle at the hustings would have resulted in a kinder, gentler version of the government, they would be disappointed.

The government initially simply denied there was anything wrong. When a specific case of fraud emerged from a centre in Gujarat and police rounded up the suspects who had agreed to manipulate the answer sheets by taking lakhs of rupees, it was forced to accept something was wrong. Even then the Union health minister Dharmendra Pradhan has not gone beyond copybook response of saying all those guilty will be punished. The matter landed before the Supreme Court where the National Testing Agency was forced to agree to retest the unusually large number of students granted grace marks.

The government’s approach has been to do the bare minimum necessary to tide over the crisis. This is problematic as new revelations keep cropping up every day. There is question of grace marks to students of centres where the in-charges have said there was no loss of time. Then there is question of how some examinees managed to get centres more than thousand kilometres from their home when the norms call for centres to be much closer. The plain truth is it stinks. And minimal response of government will not make it go away.

Exams like NEET, UPSC entrance, JEE mains and advanced, CAT and GATE are something which lakhs of students bet their life on. Their integrity needs to be absolutely guaranteed. Even a hint of irregularity in them can have dire consequences for examinees who have spent years preparing for it and their families. Every year we hear of some students ending their life following failure or even fear of failure in these examinations. The stakes are high for a very large number of students. This is specially because the perception, right or wrong, that these exams alone provide a gateway to better life for a lot of people. In a country where the youngsters do not see many opportunities in diverse fields, the competition for the few well-beaten paths to success will be high. All the more reason, then, the government should be seen to be sincere is setting everything right.

While the present crisis should be addressed comprehensively to avoid a repeat we also need to think about why certain examinations and tests attain such outsize importance. It has to do with access to quality higher education to a bulk of students. To the extent the opportunities of these are restricted, there will be mad rush of students to land the few seats available. This is particularly true of medical education. Legendary surgeon Dr Devi Shetty has underlined the importance of making medical education more accessible. He has argued against having unnecessary requirements which make setting up medical colleges extremely expensive and difficult.

This has ensured that very few private medical colleges have come up (compare that with number of private engineering colleges) and affordable medical education is available only in government sector where growth is understandably slow. This need not be so. Medical profession has successfully lobbied to keep medical education scarce in the name of ensuring quality. If we do away with unrealistic requirements of student-teacher ratio, land and buildings, and number of dedicated beds attached to medical colleges, it should be possible to set up a much larger number of medical colleges.

Of course, medical education cannot be treated like other fields and quality is important. The National Medical Commission should focus on ensuring quality even as it works to lower the entry barriers for setting up medical schools. As experts like Dr Shetty have suggested a thorough review must be undertaken whether all the requirements are still valid of some of them can be changed with the use of present-day technology and tools available to us. There are countries where medical schools set up with much less are producing quality medical professionals. As American academic-entrepreneur Scott Galloway says, the objective of higher education should be to take unremarkable students and turn them into remarkable professionals. If only the very brilliant students will get seats in quality schools, then it does not say much about their teaching abilities.

This is something the government should turn its long-term focus on once it has adequately dealt with the unfolding NEET scandal. And it must not be limited to medical educations alone though that is most in need of reform. Setting up of more IIMs and IITs is step in right direction. There should also be an effort to improve quality of education at regular universities where a bulk of students, not just the best and the brightest, land up. It should be possible for even a child of average abilities to get the education he or she wants, maybe not in the best institute but somewhere. Often it is the passion towards the work and not academic brilliance that make better professionals.

This column was published in Lokmat Times on June 19, 2024