New Delhi: Medical students at AIIMS are fired up again by a proposal by Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss protesting his decision to bring a Bill in Parliament to make a one-year rural posting mandatory.
If that Bill goes through, for medical students like Abhishek Bansal, it will mean one more year added to the five-and-a-half-year long MBBS degree.
The Minister's purpose: to strengthen the rural health system. But Bansal questions why it isn't the same for other students in professional degrees.
“Why are we there to obligate the people?” he asks.
The other proposed clause that medical students are unhappy with is that no degree will be given without completing the mandatory rural posting.
“They (government) want to use medical students as cheap labour,” says President, Medical Students Association, Gautam.
According to the Health Ministry, the rural posting will mean four months each in a rural centre, a district hospital and a taluka hospital on a stipend of Rs 8,000. With thousands of doctors qualifying across India every year, their biggest problem is getting jobs in government hospitals.
Rural postings are now becoming a bone of contention between the aspirations of the medical students and the insistence of the government that’s is trying to project rural posting as a part of it's flagship programme. Whether the Bill is passed or not, the issue will certainly not die down till either side refuse to budge.
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