Medical education in India is broken. A major problem is that medical college seats are no longer allotted to students based on their merit. The majority of seats are reserved for students who come from " backward classes "; and another huge chunk are reserved for rich students whose parents can afford to pay a lot of money to buy a seat in private medical colleges by paying the hefty capitation fee.
This problem has now become a growing cancer which is progressively eating away the quality of graduating doctors . The best solution is to reserve all the seats in all medical colleges based only on merit.
This step would solve all the problems once and for all . Thus, students from different social backgrounds and religious minorities will stop clamoring for reservations for the group they happen to belong to , because admissions will become a level playing field, and the only way to get in would be to prove your competence by working hard . Politicians will no longer start medical colleges simply in order to make money.
All kinds of reservations - whether they are based on the fact that someone is rich and can afford to pay; or that someone comes from a backward class, have a pernicious domino . Once you allow one bad doctor to graduate , he often ends up becoming a medical college professor , because often he is not competent enough to be able to practice independently. He will then start creating sub-standard medical students , as a result of which the cancer spreads throughout the system. This is why we no longer have any confidence in the competence of the doctors our medical colleges are turning out.
The short-sighted focus - either on making money ; or in keeping the backward classes happy in order to earn their votes ; is going to harm all of us in the long run , because we'll end up being treated by poorly educated doctors , who will damage our health.
