College seats, double shifts

S.S. Gill

Whether we like it or not, 27 per cent reservations for the OBCs is here to stay. The big question exercising most people is whether we have the infrastructure to accommodate the increased intake. The problem is that we are looking for solutions within the existing parameters, instead of searching for alternatives.


Advertisment We should look at how the southern states addressed the issue. At one point, there are only 14 government engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu, eight in Andhra Pradesh and one in Karnataka. Today there are 252 engineering colleges in TN, 250 in AP, and 125 in Karnataka. How did this happen? The governments of these states realised that they just did not have the resources to set up new institutions to meet the demand. Either they could keep sticking to the ‘principled’ approach of not allowing the intrusion of private technical institutions on to the hallowed turf of professional education, or adopt a pragmatic approach and permit private parties to establish engineering, medical and management colleges. They adopted the latter course.

Of course, a number of these institutions do not maintain high standards of teaching; they charge exorbitant capitation fees and indulge in other malpractices. But the best should not be made an enemy of the good. These institutions have also made a notable contribution in enabling these states to lead the country in the field of technical and professional education. Suitable regulatory mechanisms can be devised to rectify some of the malpractices. Other steps would include prescribing minimum standards of teaching and making suitable provision for labs and libraries.

There is no reason why the southern model cannot be replicated in other states to overcome the infrastructure crunch resulting from additional reservations. Most of the northern states are woefully deficient in this regard, and no serious thought has been given to establishing a slew of new technical and professional colleges in association with the private sector. Also, there need be no problem in introducing double shifts in most schools and colleges. As the buildings, libraries, laboratories, and other infrastructure already exists on the ground, all you need to do to double existing capacity is to double the teaching and administrative staff.

When it comes to medical education, things get a bit more complicated. Here, much more important than increasing the existing capacities of professional institutions is the problem of providing reasonable healthcare to 65 per cent of our population living in the villages. Thousands of primary health centres remain unmanned because MBBS degree holders do not want to live in villages and work in these centres. In an earlier, post-revolutionary phase, China solved this problem by introducing the concept of ‘barefoot doctors’. These men and women were given rudimentary training in treating the most common ailments afflicting the villagers.

Before independence, India had a more professional corps of qualified physicians, who were put through a much shorter course of medical education than the MBBS. They were fairly well-acquainted with the principles of modern medicine, and could treat almost all the simple ailments of their patients. They were awarded a ‘Licentiate of Medicine’, and were eligible to practise as physicians. But medical professionals ganged up and abolished this system on the ground that these half-baked doctors were actually a health hazard. Today, the better qualified doctors have a monopoly of the profession but the poor villager is left at the mercy of quacks, who fleece them and indiscriminately prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics and steroids to produce quick results.

There is a very urgent need to review the present system of medical education and re-introduce the earlier practice of short-duration medical courses for doctors qualified to treat simple ailments like fever, cold, cough, diarrhoea and headache. After all, most illnesses people suffer from are quite simple and do not require the service of a specialist.

As for the infrastructure required to accommodate more students, nearly half the medical colleges can be run in two shifts for MBBS students, and the other half for short-term courses, thus more than doubling the output of qualified doctors. There is bound to be lot of resistance from the entrenched medical fraternity to such reform. But given the failure to send MBBS degree holders to the countryside all these years, it is time the community came around to the view that it should not prevent the setting up of a system that could deliver basic healthcare for villagers and liberate them from the clutches of local quacks.

The writer was secretary, Mandal Commission