A Letter to Kashmiri Parents on the MBBS Obsession

Kashmiri families are once again gearing up for NEET season, with coaching classes, forms and long study nights filling the routine.

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The dream of seeing a child wear a white coat still carries weight in the valley. It suggests respect, a stable income and a safe future.

Many parents feel that an MBBS degree will solve everything. The experience of young doctors in 2025 shows a very different picture, one that every family in Kashmir should know before guiding a child toward this long and demanding journey.

India now offers around 1.37 lakh MBBS seats, a huge rise compared to earlier years. On the surface, this looks like progress. The real test begins after the degree.

Postgraduate seats have not increased in the same way. The country has only about 60,000 to 65,000 PG seats for more than one lakh MBBS graduates each year. This gap has created a serious backlog.

Many young doctors spend years trying to specialise, preparing for exams again and again or taking stopgap jobs with very low salaries.

This mismatch has pushed unemployment to levels that were hard to imagine earlier.