A brewing storm is gathering momentum countrywide following a proposal voiced by union health minister anbumani ramadoss to make rural service mandatory for all medical students. the proposal will impose a year’s hardship posting in the under-provided outbacks of rural india. Dilip Thakore reports A gale of hurricane proportions which could devastate the country’s already grossly inadequate and fragile healthcare system is gathering momentum within the country’s 262 medical colleges, offering study programmes in the dominant allopathic system of medicine, which churn out an estimated 31,000 qualified (MBBS) medical practitioners annually. (In contemporary India medical education is offered under four systems of health sciences — ayurveda, homeopathy, unani and allopathy — in 817 colleges across the country with an aggregate enrollment of 257,000 students. However this feature is focused upon issues relating to the country’s 262 medical colleges dispensing education in the mainstream allopathic system to 155,000 students). The moving force behind the brewing storm is a proposal voiced by controversial Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss to make a year’s rural service mandatory for all medical students. In effect this proposal, which is being promoted as a component of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM 2005-12) launched by prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in April 2005, will not only lengthen the duration of the basic MBBS study programme (currently five and a half years) by a year, but would also require all medical students to experience a year’s hardship posting in the under-provided and under-serviced outbacks of rural India, prior to graduation. The proposal aired by Dr. Ramadoss — a strong-willed minister used to getting his way in the 17-party Congress-led UPA (United Progressive Alliance) coalition government in New Delhi which recently completed three years in office — has dismayed the medical fraternity across the country. Ironically, the first banner of revolt against this proposal was raised in the minister’s home state of Tamil Nadu where students held coordinated protest demonstrations and called a one- day strike on September 5. Their continuous protests prompted Ramadoss to appoint a six-member committee chaired by Dr. R. Sambasiva Rao, additional director general of health services under the Union health ministry, to examine the ministerial suggestion. But the general perception within the students’ community is that the constitution of the Sambasiva Rao Committee is a mere stalling tactic, and that in any event Rao will toe the line drawn by the minister. Therefore the agitation against the compulsory rural service proposal initiated by medical students in Tamil Nadu on September 5, has spread across the country with medical students staging demonstrations and marches in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, among other states of the country. On November 24, the fire of student opposition to this proposal swept across Delhi, when a thousand-strong posse of medical students from five Delhi-based medical colleges undertook a 5 km march across the national capital to express solidarity with protesting students in other parts of the country. This confrontation between the country’s estimated 155,000 medical students’ fraternity and Ramadoss is rooted in the long-standing…
