Engineers who failed and Doctors who didn't: What are they doing now?
Keralites have clear opinions on all matters. You will observe this if you watch the prime-time discussions every evening. The economists during demonetization become disaster management specialists during floods. When someone expresses an opinion on an issue, the public do not seem to care about who is saying what, but they seem to give greater importance to how entertaining the presentation is. Prime time is distinctively entertaining than news broadcasts for this reason. The lack of subject knowledge in the speakers is not the only problem here. When you approach a topic of discussion, you should have some basic data concerning it with you. Without the data, your opinion is only a preconception at bests. There is no doubt in that policy decisions or projects built on prejudicial opinions, not backed by sufficient data, will definitely derail.
There are two topics that need to be discussed in Kerala across all sections, including the government. And both these need due surveys and data collection for policy making.
The first is about "failed" engineers.
Last year, out of the 35000 students who appeared for their final year exams at Kerala Technological University, 37% graduated. Thousands of students fall out of these programs before even reaching the final year of the course. Some of them may reappear for these exams, clear the tests, and get their engineering degrees. Even then there are above ten thousand "failed engineers" who happen every year in Kerala.
What do they do these days? Is it beneficial to the society to alienate them from the mainstream after they have put in two to three years of course work in their engineering education? Is it possible to give some credit to the subjects they have learnt, provide them with a certificate and thus bring them into our employment sector?
It is also important that the society discusses why and how we have such massive failures among engineering aspirants; but that is a topic for discussion for another day.
Next, there are an even miserable bunch of doctors who have barely passed their courses. I am referring specifically to those who pursue their medical degrees in various countries like Ukraine and Philippines. When they secure their medical degrees overseas and return to India, they are required to clear an exam to practice here. The test is known as Foreign Medical Graduate Exam. It has a pass percentage under twenty. This means that even after they have gone abroad and spent five to six years studying medicine, eight out of ten among such qualified doctors are not able to practice and are, therefore, unemployed. How many of them are from Kerala? What do these youngsters, who have passed their medical education course and failed FMGE, do?
In India, in the last four years, 61000 doctors with foreign degrees have attempted the FMGE and 8700 of them cleared the exam. That is 15% of the candidates! How many of them are from Kerala? The statistics for exclusively Kerala is not available. The unofficial data indicates that thousands of students from Kerala go abroad for their medical degrees. For the same reason, there may be thousands of them who are stuck this way in unemployment.
How do we rescue our children from the situation where they cannot practice medicine even after having a medical degree?
In a country like India where we have such shortage of doctors - alongside countless quacks, fake medical practitioners as well as systems who exist out in the open - is it even fair that doctors who have been trained for five to six years stay unemployed and ostracized? Shouldn"t there be measures to enlighten students and parents that medical studies abroad may trap them in such hopeless predicament?
These are topics that need urgent deliberations, preceding which we must initiate sufficient data collection to build the policies upon.
I have heard many comments that doctors who studied from overseas have not received sufficient training. This must be treated akin to the differences in training between various medical colleges in India. I don"t treat Indian training as terrific and overseas training as subpar. In fact, if the MCI is indeed conducting the test to ensure the quality of doctors, then let them conduct the examination for students from Indian medical colleges as well as those with foreign degrees! Isn"t that heroism?
