Bengal labourer toiling for 17 years to become a doctor
KRISHNAGAR: At a time when Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is busting rackets producing fake doctors — who buy fake MBBS and MD degrees — a poor agriculture labourer is the exception.
Pradip Halder, 48, has appeared for the medical entrance examination 17 times, every year since 2000, and is single-mindedly pursuing his dream to become a doctor. Halder, a father of two daughters and a son, took the entrance test this year too and is waiting for results. His target: to secure a rank within 500 in the SC category that will enable him to secure a seat in a government-run medical college.
The best rank he has got is 1,725. “I have to get within the top 500, which can secure me a place in a state-run medical college,” he told HT.
Halder is also praying that the common medical entrance test does not become mandatory, or even if it does, the upper age limit of 30 years for an SC candidate (25 years in the general category) is relaxed. Incidentally, Bengal does not have an age ceiling; the state has about 2,700 MBBS seats in state-run and private medical colleges.
A resident of Pratappur in Krishnaganj of Nadia district, around 125 km from Kolkata, Halder earns about Rs 4,000 a month. When it rains, the bamboo walls and the roof of tin of his house don’t prevent the water from coming in. Halder could not enroll his name in the BPL list and, therefore, did not get benefits such as cheap rice and a basic house.
Halder, whose hair is fast greying, is not at all perturbed by the jibes that are regularly directed at him. “Villagers often ridicule me as I prepare and appear for the test every year. But I am not deterred. I will be a doctor one day,” he said.