OUT OF COURT
Despite the lofty constitutional ideals propounded by the Supreme Court in several judgments, education has slowly descended over decades into crass commerce. The norms set in the judgments to rein in capitation fees in professional colleges have been bypassed by increasing the fees beyond the reach of ordinary students, leading to despair and suicide. In most private medical colleges, the degree course will now cost ~1 crore.
This has led to a spurt in the number of professional colleges with the patronage of politicians and moneybags. According to the Medical Council of India (MCI), there are 477 medical colleges, private managements far outnumbering government-run institutions. Though the regulator has laid down rules for recognition, the current flood of petitions by private colleges indicates that many of them flout the norms. The basic infrastructure is found missing in many of them. Still, they are given letters of permission and admit more students than are allowed. After admitting students at their risk, the managements rush to the court seeking interim orders to continue running their institutions with more seats, promising to set right the deficiencies by the next academic year. Very often they are lucky, though the Supreme Court has told the high courts as early as in 2004 not to pass interim orders to keep the colleges under artificial respiration to the detriment of the students. It is now the turn of the MCI, which granted permissions in the first place, to be seen to rush to the court to oppose the prayers of substandard colleges.
This situation invites high scales of corruption involving players at all levels. Last month, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested a retired high court judge, a middleman and a hawala operator for promising to “settle” in the Supreme Court the case of a trust running a medical college in Lucknow, though it was among 46 others prohibited by the government from admitting students. Crores of rupees were recovered in raids on the Delhi houses of the main conspirators.
The Supreme Court has set up an “Oversight Committee” which will oversee the activities of the MCI, not a flattering comment on the regulator. The judgments also refer to a “competent authority” and “hearing committees”, though it is not clear what their functions are in this messy field.
Inspection committees of the MCI have found in some cases woeful inadequacies in private medical colleges. In one Karnataka college, the investigators found that the staff was appointed only a month before the inspection. There was no evidence of their teaching experience or whether they were permanent appointments. Few of them had address proof. Even the patients appeared to have been rounded up to placate the team — they had vague complaints like stomach ache, cough and mild fever. In one case, male and female patients were kept together in the psychiatric ward. Some colleges, which claimed to have fulfilled the MCI criteria, raised the defence that the inspection team came two days before or after religious festivals and therefore there was no staff. Bouncers also played a role in stopping the investigation into Potemkin colleges.
Despite all these, the court has been benevolent towards the students. In most orders — sometimes contrary — those who were in the middle of the academic terms have been allowed to complete their course. What kind of doctors they would become in future is anybody’s guess. It is time the MCI provided easily accessible information to the public on its website disclosing the qualification of doctors and the institution they had studied in. In these days of Aadhaar and Right to Information this life-and-death data must be available at the fingertips. It will reduce the whitecoat hypertension of patients.
This state of affairs is rivalled only by the situation in legal education. Last week, the Madras High Court remarked that there was no need for 1,200 law colleges in the country — 175 would do. It said that in 2014, the Bar Council of India approved one new college every three days. Some of them were only “letter pad” institutions in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, selling law degrees and sending out delinquents in black coats. One inspection team was reportedly shown a marriage hall improvised as a law college.
Between such doctors and lawyers consumers of their services, especially in the interiors of the country, have little option. It is said that doctors bury/cremate their mistakes and lawyers hang theirs. That is Sophie’s Choice.