Act now
I am writing this in anguish after hearing about the passing of a young Indian student due to shelling in Ukraine. While we may blame the war, the real culprits are Indian politicians and the bureaucracy which have over the years refused to increase investment in health-care infrastructure in India. Many students move to East European countries due to the easy availability as well as less expensive cost of medical seats. But the fact is that India also loses forex with students paying fees for their courses abroad.
In India, vested interests have sustained an indirect licensing barrier by imposing huge capex needs on the creation of new medical colleges and keeping the number of seats artificially low so that they can earn ‘scarcity premium’ as well as capitation fees. This has also led to tragedies such as students ending their life because of a lack of seats, as some cases in Tamil Nadu have shown. The real culprit again is probably not the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) per se, but more to do with policymakers who refuse to significantly increase seats in medical undergraduate and postgraduate courses despite India being a vastly populated country and with the accompanying woeful medical infrastructure (with respect to resources and hospitals). The lessons from the horrific COVID-19 experience have not yet hit home. If the Prime Minister is genuinely concerned about why Indian students flock to small countries for education, the time to act is now. We must liberalise medical education and remove it from the clutches of greedy private institutions.
Sunil Kolangara,
Bengaluru
Help for students
The ongoing evacuation efforts by the Union government, with its Ministers having been sent to countries around war-ravaged Ukraine to smoothen the return of Indian students, deserve praise. India’s position on the Ukraine invasion by Russia has so far remained nuanced and confined itself to a persistent call for a diplomacy and dialogue. There have to be sincere efforts to resolve the crisis before it snowballs into a catastrophic military confrontation. Efforts to broker peace provide a glimmer of hope.
M. Jeyaram,
Sholavandan, Tamil Nadu
Our Indian students have been caught by surprise and it will be tough for them to reach airports. There are reports of students having been abused, manhandled and even robbed. There are also reports of Indian students being prevented from boarding trains. Our students do seem to be in an extremely precarious situation and even facing starvation with food and water supplies running out.
Matthew Adukanil,
Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu
Not meant for Kerala
The very nature of Kerala’s terrain and dense population should make policymakers in Kerala see sense/reason. Land is very scarce. The State is more suitable for development as a learning and knowledge centre than for any large-scale industrial development project. There are four international airports, double line broad gauge rail lines, good national highways and other roads that are enough. In addition, there is connectivity using water navigation. If faster rail connectivity is being advocated, there can be another parallel rail line. Hovercraft services can be developed from the south to the north. To tamper with hundreds of river crossings, hills and mountains and have large-scale quarrying of earth and stones will only cause havoc and disaster.
V.H. Subramoney,
Bengaluru
