India’s mighty medical education mess

July 11, 2022 /Posted byqureshi_yasser

According to the latest data of the Union education ministry, 23,000 Indian students are reading medicine in China, 18,000 in Ukraine, 16,000 in Russia, and 15,000 in the Philippines. Every year, thousands of aspiring medicos are driven out of the country because of a huge demand-supply imbalance in medical education, writes Summiya Yasmeen The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and continuing warfare between the two neighbour nations now in its fifth month, has not only devastated Ukraine and slowed the global economy, it has also torpedoed the higher education of 18,000 Indian students enrolled in medical schools across Ukraine. As the Russian military rained rockets on Ukrainian cities, television and social media platforms beamed photos and interviews with Indian students appealing for evacuation by the Indian government. By mid-March, these 18,000 students were evacuated under Operation Ganga. Escape from the ravages of war provided the students only temporary…

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Tags: Access EW, EducationWorld July 2022

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“An uneducated Indian is not a free Indian. India’s education system remains trapped in regulations that reward compliance over learning and scarcity over opportunity. The solution to exam leaks, coaching factories and unemployability is not more licensing, but more supply. We need more schools, more colleges, more competition and more education entrepreneurs. A 21st-century education must not only impart knowledge but encourage questioning. India does not need fewer cooks in the kitchen; it needs more cooks, more recipes and fewer bureaucrats guarding empty plates.”

- Manish Sabharwal, The Indian Express, (2/6)

India’s examination system rests on a foundational assumption that the process is fair, even when outcomes disappoint, and once that trust erodes, the system loses its legitimacy. This is not merely a technical controversy but a credibility crisis, because digitising evaluation is not the same as reforming it. Technology can assist evaluation, but it cannot replace the intellectual responsibility that fair assessment demands. The controversy has shown that technology has not removed subjectivity or error, it has merely shifted them into a different format. Educational institutions cannot run experiments on students whose futures depend on these results, and the obligation is to anticipate failure before implementation, not offer explanations after the damage is done.

- P John J Kennedy, The Indian Express, (26/5)

India’s mighty medical education mess

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