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We, COLLECTIVE, demand a total scrapping of the inefficient, non-transparent and privately-outsourced National Testing Agency (NTA) and regulation of private coaching Mafia cartel.
Following is the reporting of some recent activities conducted by us, both offline and online among the people, to raise our voices against NTA and the privatisation of education.
COLLECTIVE Bangalore did campaigns throughout June and July and a mass petition was submitted to the Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The following text is a transcription from the presentation given by Comrade Farid, during an online discussion organised by ‘Forum for Equity in Health’ on ‘NEET, NET and NTA: Symptoms of a Larger Crisis in Education’ on 19th July, 2024 –
NEET – An Indirect Reservation for the Rich
“Comrade Sulochana has provided a detailed analysis of the current NEET scam. I would like to make some general points about the impact of an exam like on the overall healthcare system of the country. So basically NEET as an exam was introduced in 2013. It was introduced as the gateway exam to all the medical colleges of the country. Earlier there used to be state PMT exams, exams for central universities, AIIMS. So AIIMS used to have a different exam and AIPMT was basically an exam for 15% of the total seats. Now NEET has replaced all of these exams. Main problem with a centralised exam like NEET is that it does not respect the diversity in terms of language, in terms of socio-economic conditions of the students. So it fails to respect all those factors. You cannot basically expect a student from say, a remote area in Bihar to compete on the same level with someone who has got an education from a metro city like Delhi or Mumbai. So there is a big big discrepancy, there is no level playing field for all the students. Also after the advent of NEET there has been an upsurge in the coaching institutions that have come up. So only if you can afford expensive coaching then you can basically enter the medical college. So this has led to a complete demographic shift in the kind of students that are entering medical colleges. So there are more than 700 medical colleges in the country with over 1,10,000 seats in total, so half of these seats are in private medical colleges and half are in government medical colleges. The fees in government medical colleges is around 20-30,000 per year while in private medical colleges it is in the range of 20 to 30 lakh per year, which is about 100 times more than the government medical college. So you can basically imagine like how many families in the country or how many people in the country can afford to pay, let’s say 1 to 1.5 crore for MBBS degree. So NEET and this private medical colleges is basically a system designed to, and is basically an indirect reservation for the rich class. So this itself basically debunks the myth of NEET that it promotes meritocracy because NEET actually facilitates private colleges to take up students who can afford that kind of fee irrespective of the merit. So it does not actually respect merit also.
The Privatisation of Healthcare
The committee headed by Justice AK Rajan provided evidence that after the advent of NEET there has been a significant decrease in the number of students coming from poor or rural background or coming from backgrounds having educated in local languages. So those students who cannot afford this kind of exuberant fees are either forced to go outside of India to study. So only last year about 62,000 students gave the FMG exam which is basically Foreign Medical Graduate exam which Indian students who did MBBS from abroad have to give when they come back to India so as to be allowed to practice here. So 62,000 of those students gave that exam last year. It means that almost equal number of students are taking up MBBS from abroad as those students who are doing their MBBS from India. So another point to note here is that this FMG exam has about 15% pass rate, which is very low. So many students are basically stuck here before they can be allowed to practice in India. Our Health Minister recently tweeted that the doctor population ratio in India is 1 is to 834 which is much better than the WHO recommendation which is 1 is to 1000. But this is again a statistical fraud because they have included about 6,00,000 AYUSH practitioners also in this data. So they are falsely giving the data that the doctor population ratio is better and that it met the requirement WHO has set up. And again it’s not just about the numbers, it’s not about how many doctors are there. It is more about the distribution, the accessibility, the affordability of healthcare. So someone who has spent 1 crore, or more than that on his education, do you think he will go and practice in rural areas, or he will be able to provide affordable healthcare? He will not, and once he completes his MBBS he will go out and will set out to recover all the money from the patients. So a centralised exam like NEET is a method to promote private medical colleges and it is a part of privatisation of healthcare.
NEET, NEP and Fee Hikes
The recent NEET paper leak is definitely not an aberration. It is common knowledge that the more centralised an exam is, the more it is prone to breach of integrity. Also the government has delegated the task of conducting such an important exam to a private agency which is NTA. So this basically is a part of the larger privatisation project that the government has undertaken on a very large scale. With measures like New Education Policy (NEP), this project is certainly going to pick up pace in the coming years and by setting up institutes like HEFA (Higher Education Funding Agency), it is nothing but a collaboration between CANARA Bank and MHRD. So now it is the private entity which is going to fund education, which should be the responsibility of the government itself. So the government is basically shunning its responsibility of providing quality and affordable education and we can see this in fee hikes in various colleges which is basically a consequence of the implementation of these policies. In the name of autonomy, educational institutions are charging and extracting all the fees of whatever they are spending. So the government is not taking any responsibility and all of this is done to further increase the marginalisation of the poor.
Privatisation of Healthcare and Education, and Our Way forward!
So overall I think NEET is a part of the bigger problem of privatisation of healthcare, privatisation of education. So talking about the solution, I would like to say that people have to speak up, people have to protest any such measures. People have to protest the commodification of healthcare and education which is happening. And it has to be the responsibility of the state to provide affordable and good quality healthcare and education to all the citizens. So people have to come out on the streets, have to protest and raise their voices against these injustices. So finally i would like to conclude by expressing my solidarity to the student protests in Bangladesh who have been protesting since a number of days against the problematic quota-system that the government is introducing there, which is basically a 30% reservation in government jobs to the war veterans and this is actually meant to favour the political or war veteran families. So students have been protesting against these measures and about 30 students have been killed in these protests. We should all express our solidarity with those students and I think the main point is that we need to organise, we need to stand up, we need to raise our voice because if we don’t protest and we have seen this with the Farmer’s protest, that by raising your voice you can force the government to change its policies, otherwise the government is hellbent on privatising everything and the majority of the population which is poor and marginalised are going to suffer further in the coming years if they don’t raise their voice. So all of us who are aware need to support and express solidarity with all these movements that are happening. Thank you so much, that is all.”
Dr. Farid Alam is a member of COLLECTIVE and also an Assistant Professor at MMIMSR, Ambala
