India takes a strange ‘protectionist’ decision.
AB Wire
In what is perhaps the worst decision taken by the government of India to change the fate of those who wish to emigrate, physicians who have got medical degrees from India and then go to the United States for higher studies, are now being forced to return to India as the government has stopped issuing them a requisite ‘no objection’ certificate.
According to a report in The Times of India, since 2010, around 4000 doctors applied for a no objection certificate from the government to be permitted to stay on in the US after completing their higher medical studies, shows data from the health ministry.
The US government had imposed a condition requiring such students to return to their home countries for two years after completion of studies. The US, however, allows a waiver of the two-year home-coming, for those who wished to stay back and practise medicine, only if the home nation issues them a certificate called, `No Obligation to Return to India’ (NORI).
The Indian government decided to stop issuing NORI certificates, except to those aged 65 and above, since last August.
Dr. Sagar Mundada, president, Central Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors, told the Times, it was an “unconstitutional, retrograde move” and he moved the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court to have the decision quashed.
“Since the policy changed in 2011, it’s not clear how many were given no objection, but the fate for most hangs in balance now,” he said.
India’s reason for the decision: the country needs 400,000 more doctors to meet with the minimum 1:1000 doctor-citizen ratio prescribed by the World Health Organization.
“Government is using doctors as a soft target when other professionals are allowed to leave the country and do not even have to serve a bond. Doctors are the only ones who serve a mandatory bond service in rural areas after graduation, and again after their masters, for a year each in Maharashtra. Government spends a fortune on IITians, many of who leave the country for greener pastures, but they have no such service to perform,” said Mundada.
“Engineers and management graduates should also be asked to contribute a year’s service in the rural sector on development projects which will go a long way to nation-building. Improved infrastructure with their assistance, would improve primary health care accessibility in these areas too,” he added, according to the Times report.
2 Comments
The best thing will be to stop practising medicine if forced to stay in India. Govt treats medical service as a business, by putting doctors under CPA, charging commercial taxes for maintaining clinical establishments and having many draconian anti Doctor laws. On the other hand everyone expects doctors to do charity. With epic public ignorance about health, blaming doctors for everything, violence against doctors…why serve in this kind of environment? People of this country, who murder their own unborn daughters, neglect accident victims on the roads, vote for promises of drugs, worship drunk-driving celebrities, bay for the blood of doctors who are actually trying to help. Pathetic.
What reason(s) do you give for these professionals to return? Do the Ministers have the same level of duty to the poor? Why don’t they perform their civic duty and serve in this same fashion? Another stupid move by the Government of India. It’s a curse to be born in this country.