What Ails Our Med Ed?

Professionally Stranded Medical Students From Ukraine Expose The Larger Crisis In Medical Education In India Where Limited Seats, Intense Competition, Prohibitive Cost And Lack Of Faculty Thwart Rising Aspirations

- Kaushik Deka with Rahul Noronha and Amitabh Srivastava

Uzhhorod is a world apart, and nearly 6,000 kilometers, from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. Truth be told, you may not even have heard of the place even in India’s metros. Unless of course, you were seeking a medical degree, and a simple Google search for a cheaper option to acquire an MBBS qualification threw up the west Ukrainian city among the possibilities. At least that is how Chhindwara resident Arshpreet Kaur, 21, found herself at the Uzhhorod National Medical University two years back, and now, in her second year of medicine, was caught stranded, first in a war zone, and now professionally as well. When a belligerent Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, decided to invade Ukraine, Arshdeep was among the 18,000 Indian medical students in the country who were rescued as part of Operation Ganga.

But though the Indian government’s initiative brought Arshdeep safely back home on March 6, the uncertainty of her future haunts her ceaselessly. Will she ever be able to return and complete her degree? Particularly as many of these students were castigated on social media for having brought the situation upon themselves by chasing a foreign degree when they could just as well have stayed behind in their own country and studied in one of its medical colleges.