Against a backdrop of uncertainty and confusion in medical education which has raised misgivings about the quality of graduates certified by India™s 355 medical colleges, 439 sample respondents have voted for stability in the 2014 league table “PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF! This is an imperative India™s medical profession needs to urgently heed. Because the country™s medical system is in a near-terminal state and requires strong medicine to resuscitate it. For a start, despite its subcontinental size and population of 1.2 billion, India is served by only 355 colleges of allopathic medicine which certify 41,469 MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) graduates and 22,000 postgraduates (MDs) annually. That this seemingly impressive number of medical practitioners qualified to practice modern (allopathy) medicine is grossly inadequate is testified by India™s rock-bottom doctor-patient ratio of 1:1,700. Against this, the doctor-patient ratio in the US is 1:407, 1:357 in the UK and 1:714 in China. Yet despite the country™s abysmally adverse doctor-patient ratio, India is perhaps the world™s largest exporter of qualified medical practitioners. But for the number of medical practitioners from India serving in them, it™s quite likely the publicly-funded National Health Service of the UK and perhaps even the healthcare system in the US would collapse. Clearly, something is very wrong with medical education, medical practice and the medical system in India. One of the major causative factors behind the continuous flight of doctors to foreign climes is poor governance of medical education and practice by the apex level Medical Council of India (MCI, estb. 1934). For the past 80 years through myriad rules and regulations and an opaque licencing system, MCI has severely constrained capacity expansion in medical education with the council acquiring a notorious reputation for corruption and graft even as successive governments at the Centre and in the states discouraged education entrepreneurs from creating new capacity by decreeing forced subsidies and reserved quotas in private medical colleges. Unchecked corruption in medical education reached its apogee in the new millennium. A rash of scandals in MCI during the infamous ten-year (2001-10) reign of chairman Ketan Desai (finally arrested in 2010 on charges of corruption) severely dented the quality of medical education, forcing the Central government to dissolve the council in 2010. Subsequent to disbandment of MCI, the Union health ministry constituted a six-member interim Board of Governors with a one-year term, and last November the UPA-II government reconstituted MCI with 68 (of the total 130) members elected/nominated by various states and universities through the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Second Ordinance, 2013. However several state universities have yet to propose members for the newly constituted MCI which will have a term of four years. Against this backdrop of uncertainty and confusion in medical education which has raised misgivings about the quality and competence of the 41,000 MBBS graduates certified annually by India™s 355 medical colleges, it™s unsurprising that the 439 informed sample respondents have voted for stability in the second EducationWorld India Medical Colleges Rankings 2014. As in 2013, survey respondents have…
