Its a NEET Diaspora Out There

A CBSE book cover (pic:koolskool.in)

In the sequence of National Policies on Development, Water, Labor and other items of national interest coming to light, another of the Center's programs to safeguard its brainchild national interest through establishing uniform standards has surfaced in the matter of education - something that could put a nation on track - the right one or an entirely wrong one.

Earlier this week some students in the pre-university grade from Karnataka approached the Supreme Court demanding to quash one of Medical Council of India's (MCI) notifications - one that forces these students to study subjects based on CBSE curriculum to clear the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), different from their current State curriculum. This new qualifier test is not just an unnecessary replacement of the erstwhile Common Entrance Test (CET) in Karnataka, but also a tragic one for a majority of students in all non-Hindi States since the NEET is rendered only in Hindi and English! This is a dual blow because it is a blow by the Center to the State governments that are seen as subordinate here, and a blow of Hindi imperialism on non-Hindi speaking peoples of India.

The MCI was established in the pre-independence year of 1934. The basis for its establishment back then could be related to the bringing in of alien western methods of medication into colonial India by the British who obviously required to oversee its installation. But the 1956 version of a new Act with the same name empowers the Government of India (GoI), just a six year old republic having no semblance to the British power in terms of medical knowledge supremacy, with supreme powers with regards to establishing uniform standards in medical education in the entire of India and to oversee the registration of medical institutes, professionals and professional courses across the wide nation.

With no sign of medical know-how supremacy at the Center per-se, yet sheer authority in its hands, it is obvious that the MCI has created avenues for its abuse. Although Education is a concurrent subject today, the Center has been able to wield MCI as a weapon to bring education (at least in medical profession) under its sole control. Rolling out programs like NEET that are a combination of the CBSE curriculum menace and Hindi imperialism, it is also able to enable more students from the Hindi belt States to clear NEET because the test is administered in Hindi and no other Indian language. Given the current skew in number of professional institutions across India, NEET leads to a big undesirable diaspora paving way for further sliding of the BIMARU state definition. More importantly, programs such as NEET take away the rights of States to conduct their own qualifiers whereas establishments such as MCI limit the States rights to start new professional institutions based on their own needs.

As seen from this series, a suppression of legislative powers at the State level by the Center has been causing havoc in so many spheres of life that the Indian democracy is now really questionable from many an angle. If such a fundamental right as Education can be held in the concurrent list for so long and the Center being solely responsible for progress under this heading does little but use it to fuel its hidden agenda (of Hindi imposition and uncontrolled migration etc.) it is time that the States educate themselves and demand change.