The Medical Council of India (MCI) is under the radar for quite some time now for its poor regulation of medical education. To check out the poor state of affairs at the body, a committee was formed that is headed by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya. The committee is expected to submit its report about scrapping up the MCI to the government of India next week.
After several rounds of deliberation on the issue with experts and shareholders, the committee on MCI has finalized its report. The panel has made up its mind about recommending the scrapping up of MCI for its failure in increasing the medical colleges in the country which could have paved the way for producing more doctors and surgeons. This could have, further, helped in catering to the increasing demand for healthcare services in the country. Therefore, the three-member committee has proposed to set up an altogether new body with a focus on three main areas: career, enterprise and ethics.
The committee was found after a parliamentary committee demanded revamping the MCI since it failed in its role of a regulatory body. This led to a downfall in India’s medical education system. The committee even asked the government to use its constitutional authority and to take a decisive action to restructure and revamp the system of regulation and practice.
The basis for revamping or restructure the regulatory system of MCI include failure of initiatives on the part of MCI that could stop medical system from falling down, keep the quality of education under check, to create a curriculum to produce doctors for Indian context and inability to maintain uniform standards in medical education at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
This is not all as the devaluation of merit in admission and prevalence of capitation fee in the medical institutions in particular made medical education only available for the rich a few and not necessarily to the deserving lot. Failure to set up medical colleges in the country as per the need of the hour, on the other hand, also resulted in an unproportional distribution of medical colleges region wise. This led to the abundance of medical teachers and doctors in one state and shortage, as compared to population ratio, in many others.
MCI has failed to oversee and guide the present medical education system in the country. Consequently, this important task went in the hands of commercial, private industry. MCI also failed on all other fronts including instilling the respect for code and conduct of medical profession and take right disciplinary actions against medical professionals violating the code.