The storm of strikes and protest against the controversial National Medical Commission Bill hasn’t settled down. The NMC Bill seeks to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) with a National Medical Commission headed by a government-nominated chairman and to introduce a ‘bridge course’, to help practitioners of Ayurveda and other traditional medical systems get license to prescribe allopathic drugs, a move that has enraged the medico community. College campuses are wide awake with discussions and debates on the Bill affecting their propitious future.
Medical students across the country are concerned over the issue. “When they tell us that our degree, which we earned surpassing such intense and cut-throat competition is of a lower standard than that of foreign universities where the syllabus is significantly less dense and serious, we are offended. They are undermining the true value of my education, which took years and years of strenuous training to cultivate. They are blocking our only opportunity to rise. They cannot take back our education, it's true, but they are taking away pretty much everything else — our postgraduate career, our future, our job security and our mental health,” opines Aamiya Jilson Jose, a second-year student at Govt Medical College, Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu.
“There isn’t a single word favouring us in the Bill. We have worked hard to secure seats in medical colleges and we have been studying always. No student comes out as doctors without knowledge. After all these, they are asking us to write a separate exam to prove our standards. Further, those who have done other courses are allowed to get our degrees without 1/100th of the effort we took and they are allowed to take up our practices and PG seats! Are our efforts useless? Or does the government want us to move from the nation we lived to practise our profession,” asks Asiya Sadique, a third-year MBBS student of MES Medical College in Malappuram.
While the move is frowned upon by MBBS students, other medico students seem to have a different opinion. “As students of medical profession, our ultimate goal is to take care of public health. Ayurveda, homeopathy and other traditional systems of medicine have a rich history and have a lot of followers who believe in their power to heal. The main aim of the NMC Bill is to provide quality medical facilities all over the nation. Hence, the bridge course will help produce more MBBS graduates who can serve in the primary health centres and rural dispensaries across the nation. But being an Ayurveda student, I personally feel that this will diminish the true essence of medical systems like Ayurveda and homeopathy and will promote Allopathy.
What the government should do is to raise the educational standard of medical courses and provide more opportunities for higher studies and research,” feels Shajin K.J., a fourth-year BAMS student of Government Ayurveda College, Tripunithura. As the matter lies under consideration of the government, students hope that their voices will be heard and decisions taken safeguarding their interests.
