The Hindu : New Delhi News : Go-ahead for controversial proposal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Go-ahead for controversial proposal

By Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI, MARCH 29. Having turned down this "amendment" at least four times from 2000 onward after it was first proposed, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) along with the Medical Council of India (MCI) is now giving final touches to this "controversial change''.

The proposal now cleared by the Ministry on March 15, 2005, and sent to MCI for further action, proposes that "non-teaching specialists working in non teaching hospitals be considered for the post of professor, associate professor and assistant professor based on their length of their service''.

According to the existing MCI Postgraduate Regulations, a medical college teacher (teaching specialist) is selected by an appropriate selection board of the UPSC/ University from among the best eligible candidates in the country after an open advertisement against a sanctioned post. It is also mandatory that a postgraduate teacher has a minimum teaching experience of eight years of undergraduate teaching in a medical college as a faculty before he can even be considered as a postgraduate teacher. These norms are being followed in all recognised medical colleges and postgraduate training institutes across the country.

What the Government now proposes to do is to allow physicians from non-teaching hospitals with no teaching experience to apply for the post of assistant professor. Ten years of this service would make him eligible for post of reader and in another eighteen years he can become a professor.

"This is equivalent to All India Council for Technical Education recommending that a Central Public Works Department (CPWD) engineer working in a CPWD office should be recognised as a professor of engineering based on his length of service in the CPWD. The amendment will permanently wreck the quality of medical college faculty (postgraduate teachers),'' said members of the Faculty Association; which consists of teachers from teaching hospital including Mulana Azad Medical College, Lady Hardinge Medical College, University College of Medical Sciences, Lok Nayak Hospital, G.B. Pant Hospital, Guru Nanak Eye Centre and Dental College and Hospitals.

"The proposal was turned down previously as it was thought that this would bring down the quality of education. At a time when quality education is rapidly being operationalised as a fundamental right and the levels of higher education is being increasingly professionalised and set against evidence based global norms, this move will reduce teaching physicians post equivalent to `gifting' a designation to non teaching specialist depending on their duration of service as non teachers,'' explained the protesting doctors, who have also written to the Union Health Minister, asking for scrapping what they termed was a move to bring down the standard of the medical colleges across the country.

Meanwhile, president MCI, Keshavan Kutty Nayar, when asked about the "change" said that "he wasn't aware of anything like this in the offing''.

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