The academic and medical communities in the western sea-board state of Maharashtra (pop. 99 million) are outraged about show-cause notices issued by the Delhi-based Medical Council of India (MCI) to one of Mumbai’s most respected medical colleges. In a curious case of pot calling kettle black, MCI, which over the past decade under the presidency of the recently ousted Ketan Desai had become an acronym synonymous with corrup-tion and extortion, issued a second showcause notice on August 11 to the Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College (SGSMC, estb. 1926) which has an enrolment of 2,000 undergraduate and postgrad students. SGSMC, which is associated with Mumbai’s prestigious 1,800-bed KEM (King Edward Memorial) Hospital which treats 1.8 million out-patients and 68,000 in-patients annually, has been threatened with de-recognition of its undergrad MBBS study programme.
According to the MCI notice, SGSMC-KEM has a deficit of 57 faculty. Medical practitioners and educationists in Mumbai in particular are in a lather because SGSMC-KEM is among the finest medical college hospitals in India. SGSMC, popularly known as KEM College, is regularly ranked among India’s top ten medical colleges by India Today and other respected media surveys. According to its alumni, India’s first ever heart transplant was cond-ucted at KEM hospital, and SGSMC boasts active research departments which have published over 2,000 research papers nationally and internationally, and has attracted grants from the Bill Gates Foundation and National Institute of Health, USA. Funded by the Bombay Municipal Corporation, both institutions are charitable trusts providing free-of-charge medical care and service to the public.
Incidentally, the older Ketan Desai-led MCI was itself dissolved on May 14 on charges of corru-ption. During Desai’s five-year tenure, MCI had granted recognition to 35 colleges, many of them with grossly inadequate infrastructure while some of the country’s most respected medical colleges — including the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal — were briefly derecognised. On May 24, a new seven-member MCI was constituted, and it has routinely issued the August 11 notice to KEM College. “Even though the MCI has been reconstituted, they don’t seem inclined to take a fresh look at the cases on their table. They are just following old cases routinely,” says Dr. Sanjay Oak, dean of SGSMC.
Against the backdrop of India hosting a mere 668,000 qualified (allopathy) medical practi-tioners for its 1.18 billion population (cf. USA’s 850,000 medical practitioners for 307 million), the consensus of opinion within the community of medical practitioners and educationists is that the norms and standards prescribed by MCI are outdated. They argue that new information communication technologies need to be embraced to counter the teacher shortage problem. “KEM College has already installed e-classrooms, and does not require the number of teachers prescribed by MCI,” says Dr. Chetan Kantharia, associate professor at SGSMC and senior surgeon of the department of surgical gastroentrology at KEM Hospital.
Adds Dr. Oak: “The MCI must revise its norms. Currently its faculty and infrastructure norms are so high that it is impossible for any government medical college to comply. We want to be able to provide students quality medical education but with faculty remuneration, tuition fees and admission controlled by government, our job is becoming very difficult.”
Although Oak is loath to stress the point, lack of autonomy and iron-fisted government control of all government-run medical colleges make it impossible for them to attract faculty. For even though MCI has calculated Rs.4 lakh per year as the cost of medical education provision, SGSMC’s tuition fee for its 2,000 students is a mere Rs.20,000 per year — a shortfall which can’t be made up with its modest annual grant (Rs.140 crore in 2009-10). Moreover faculty salaries are determined by the state government rather than the SGSMC management and capped at Rs.40,000 per month.
“Government medical colleges are running on dismally low government grants and abysmally low tuition fees and cannot afford to pay their faculty market salaries. Therefore there are few adequately qualified takers for faculty positions. Hence the 57 vacancies. Autonomy will enable SGSMC to charge actual cost of tuition provision and raise funds independently instead of being pathetically dependent on meagre government grants, pay market salaries, provide state-of-the-art infrastructure and produce international standard doctors which is its prime purpose,” says Dr. Ameet Pispathi, orthopedic surgeon at Mumbai’s Bhatia and Jaslok hospitals, and a KEM alumnus.
But such rational advice falls on deaf ears in the offices of the municipal corporation and state government. Meanwhile shortages of faculty — and medical practitioners — will persist.
Swati Roy & Bharati Thakore (Mumbai)
Children’s crusade
Students of the tokawade ashram Residential School — a K-10 school promoted for tribal children in the vicinity of the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary, 120 km from Pune — are up in arms. More than 100 of them appended their signatures to a strongly worded letter addressed to the district collector, conservator of forests, and all authorities concerned, urging them to impose a ban on plastic carry bags in and around the sanctuary. Their initiative is being supported by 150 class VII and VIII students of other ashram schools in the neighbourhood. According to the children, plastic bags are strewn all over the area which, apart from the sanctuary, hosts one of Maharashtra’s most popular Shiva temples and attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims every month and over 100,000 during the Mahashivratri celebrations.
Although this huge tourist flow has generated jobs and incomes in the Ambegaon and Khed talukas of Pune district, it is also the prime cause of environmental damage that’s threat-ening wildlife in the sanctuary and scarring the environment. Tourists litter the area with plastic bags which are causing untold damage to the fragile eco-system of the region. Although the district’s elders are inclined to appreciate the economic benefits of tourism, students of the three ashram shalas (schools) in the area are in revolt against environmental despoilation.
Currently the state government’s tribal development department runs 410 fully residential, free-of-charge ashram shalas (including 273 ‘post basic’ — upto class X — schools) with an aggregate enrolment of 135,000 tribal boys and girl children.
Students of the Tokawade Ashram Residential School (estb. 1992), which has an enrolment of 340 students from classes I-X, are in the forefront of the anti-plastics agitation, and allege that plastic waste is endangering precious wildlife in the sanctuary. One of the students cites the death of a giant squirrel, which inhabits the sanctuary. The garbage also attracts dogs which hunt deer species.
Supporting the students is Kalpavriksh, an NGO conducting environment education programmes in Pune district. “There is no system of garbage disposal. This area needs dustbins and an organised garbage-disposal system to avoid a major envir-onmental disaster,” confirms Sharmila Deo, a coordinator at Kalpavriksh.
Meanwhile Tokawade Ashram students have resorted to pressuring shopkeepers selling flowers and pooja items to visiting pilgrims to abjure plastic bags. They cite a study conducted by Kalpavriksh to the effect that wild and domestic animals in this area have been eating plastic bags to get at the leftovers inside them. According to Purnima Phadke, a team member of the Kalpavriksh education programme, garbage and plastic have also adversely affected the quality of water in the river Bhima. “People in downstream villages can no longer use the river for drinking water,” she says. Declared a reserve forest in 1985, Bhimashankar boasts several varieties of trees, 236 bird and 66 mammal species.
M.K. Rao, conservator of forests of the Maharashtra government, admits to having received students’ petitions soliciting a ban on plastic carry bags. “I will examine all the legislation and propose a ban on plastic bags. Meanwhile, we are initiating steps to address the garbage problem. Twenty gunny bags have been placed within the sanctuary to collect garbage and display boards instruct tourists about safe garbage disposal,” he informs.
But these half-hearted measures are unlikely to satisfy Tokawade’s children. “We want the area to be clean and we want it to remain clean forever. Till that happens we will keep writing to the authorities and stage demonstrations,” says Aniruddh Tekawle (12).
The silver lining is that the children are learning something useful in their classrooms.
Huned Contractor (Pune)