Carrot for JNIMS faculty Stick for medical school
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 09 2011 -

Getting the nod from the Medical Council of India was not easy, for it is not a joke to meet the standards stipulated for setting up a medical school. In fact the MCI had to send its team to Manipur more than once to get a first hand account of the state at the Jawaharlal Institute of Medical Sciences, before it finally decided to give its okay signal to set up the first State managed medical school here.

Those who follow the state of affairs in Manipur will remember the anxious creases writ large on the face of the Chief Minister whenever he visited and inspected the pace of work at the proposed JNIMS and the creases on his visage underlined the sense of urgency as well as the anxiety of whether he would ever realise the dream of seeing a State run medical institution come to fruition.

The hiccups along the way were prominently visible and chief among them were the desperate measures that the State Government had to take up to attract medical professionals to join as the faculty members of the proposed institution. That the MCI had laid down certain stiff eligibility norms only added to the discomfiture of the State Government and it is only fitting that the strictest and toughest eligibility criteria should be laid down for any medical professionals to join as faculty members of a medical school.

The very nature of the profession also demands it, for medical science is a highly specialised field and half baked knowledge means compromising with the life and safety of the sick and ailing.

Md Allimuddin is today remembered as one of the better Chief Ministers that the State has produced and chief among the factors for this positive view of the late man was the setting up of the Regional Medical College in Imphal.

RMC is now RIMS and under the Union Health Ministry and the benefits that Manipur has been able to reap from this institution need not be elaborated. Seen in this perspective, the efforts put in by Chief Minister O Ibobi deserve our acknowledgement but here again, the hands of the very people who run it are today threatening to tear apart all the preparations and efforts that went into the making of JNIMS, into tatters.

Reservation was deemed necessary by the architects of the Constitution of India to act as some sort of a cushion for the deprived section of society so that an even playing field may be mapped out for them.

The period of reservation set was ten years but somewhere down the line reservation came to be equated with vote bank politics and today it is no longer seen as the mechanism to pave the way for the deprived people to have an equal footing with the other more privileged class of people, but solely as the means to vote a party to power.

Populist propaganda is what has defiled the initial philosophy behind the reservation policy and the disturbing part is, instead of learning a lesson or two from this, a good number of people, who belong to the privileged section of society are ready to go to any length to cook up their own version of reservation so that its benefits go to their offsprings or chosen ones.

The circular issued by the Director of JNIMS that 5 pc seat of the total intake capacity of the institution be kept aside for children of the faculty members falls into the category of the privileged section of society circumventing policies of the Government to suit their own immediate needs.

As things stand today, the intake capacity of JNIMS is 100 student annually. Out of this 15 seats go to the Central pool while the remaining 85 seats come under the State Government.

Again out of the 100 seats available for admission, 31 pc is reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, 17 percent for the OBC and 2 percent for the Scheduled Caste. This in effect means that 50 seats should be left in the open for the general and unreserved candidates.

As per a ruling of the Supreme Court of India, reservation cannot exceed 50 pc of the total intake capacity and if 5 percent is set aside for the faculty members, then the seats left in the open category will be only 45. This means that 55 pc seats or 55 seats will come under the reserved category.

The State Government is yet to take a final decision on this matter, but indications are that it is not averse to this idea and has suggested that the 5 pc seat for the faculty members should not come under the common admission test and the candidates under this category should be selected on the basis of their performance in the board exams !

The logic for this suggestion is easy to grasp. The State Government is yet to amend the MBBS/BDS entrance examination and in its current form, it has no provisions for setting aside certain percentage of seats for faculty members !

Talk about trying to beat the laid rules with some imaginative thinking! Nothing can be more fundamentally contrary to the spirit of a medical school than this idea. In the first place setting aside 5 pc of the seat means it will come at the cost of the candidates in the open category.

This is not only unfair but also speaks volume about the mentality of the people manning the affairs of JNIMS. Secondly, deserving candidates who have made the cut after putting in long months of toil and sweat stand exposed to the danger of seeing their career getting frittered away if any parent or anyone decides to take the matter to the Court as this would amount to putting the competitive examination under a legal cloud.

In one stroke, the academic year of a group of students may be derailed unnecessarily. It just does not make any sense and we wonder what the MCI will say if the matter reaches them or is the role of the MCI finished and over once it has given the green signal to an institution to start moving ?