Southern Stirrings

A mid heated debates on federal directives, new norms introduced by India’s medical education regulator are inviting another round of allegations about the Centre attempting to encroach upon the rights of the southern states

- Amarnath K. Menon

The issue rose to its full potential for controversy when, on October 4, Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi protesting an August 16 National Medical Commission (NMC) notification. Limiting the number of MBBS seats in any state/ Union Territory (UT) to 100 per one million population, the notification in effect prevents the southern states from opening new medical colleges or adding more MBBS seats by expanding old ones. This bizarre outcome comes about because, going by the 100 per million criterion, all the southern states have already exceeded their limits.

If forced to abide by this ceiling, it will be a serious dampener on the plans of individual states. In Tamil Nadu, it jeopardises the Stalin government’s vision to have at least one government medical college in each district. In Telangana, it puts a question mark on the 800 seats already sanctioned for eight new medical colleges that were to begin classes in the next academic year. Better-performing states/ UTs outside the south—Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Puducherry et al—too will share this anomalous plight of actually being prohibited from making more provisions for medical education just because they have already demonstrated their capacity to do so.