Competition, fewer seats sending Indians abroad for medical education

Two days ago, Naveen Shekharappa, a 22-year-old medical student of Ukraine’s Kharkiv National Medical University died in a shelling incident. Hailing from Haveri in Karnataka, he was a fourth-year medical student. Speaking with reporters, his father Shekarappa said that his son was a bright student who had scored 97 per cent marks in the Pre-University Course (equivalent to class XII) but could not secure a medical in India.

These comments have sparked a discussion on the high demand, yet low number of medical seats in India. According to the latest data available with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, currently 90,825 Undergraduate medical seats are available in India, in government and private colleges combined. When it comes to medical colleges, there are 533 of them in India, of which almost half (261) are privately managed. This is, as of March 2020.

Dearth of seats

But are these medical seats enough? It doesn’t seem so, according to the data. In 2021, according to the National Testing Agency, 16,14,777 people had registered to appear for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test. This is a 1.09 per cent increase from 2020. Of these 1.6 million students, only around half of them, 8,70,075 students cleared the medical entrance examination.

However, the number of MBBS seats that India has is just a little over 10 per cent of that number. This means, almost 90 per cent of the students who clear NEET will not get into a medical college in India. Also, for 5 medical seats in India, there are 100 people competing.

Over the years, India did increase its number of medical seats. However, it still isn’t enough to match the demand. On August 10, 2021, while answering a question in the parliament, Dr Bharati Pawar, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare of India said, “The number of MBBS seats in the country has increased by 53% from 54,348 seats in 2014 to 83,275 seats in 2020.” According to the National Medical Commission, only about half of these seats, 43,435 were in government colleges. Affordability too becomes a factor here, because capitation fees in most private colleges range between ₹50 lakh to a crore, according to reports.

As of August 2021, a major chunk of medical seats was in Karnataka and Maharashtra — 9,345 and 9,000 respectively. Tamil Nadu had 8,000 medical seats. Nagaland had no medical seats or colleges. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim had 50 medical seats each.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs, 11,33,749 Indians are studying abroad, as of July 2021. While there is no clear data on how many of them pursue medical education, the National Board of Examination data says that 23,349 students appeared for the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination 2021. However, of them, only 5,665 passed the test, which qualifies them to practice as a doctor in India. Over the years, the most number of students (35,774) wrote the exam in 2020. In 2019, according to NBE, the number was 28,597

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