Rising Inequity and Disparities in Medical Education in India: Challenges to Training a Representative Workforce (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED There is a paucity of available medical services in India, attributable to inadequate and indiscriminate distributions of infrastructure and medical practitioners throughout the country. Well-equipped tertiary health care centres are predominantly found in Indian cities, with the rural population bearing the brunt of this inequity. While bridging the gap in resource-limited areas requires a multiprong approach, basic necessities are a must. These necessities include basic laboratory and imaging capabilities, as well as critical care devices, such as ventilators, but foremost among them remains the recruitment of a representative health workforce. Traditionally, the path to becoming a specialist medical practitioner in India has required industrious efforts and ample resources including financing. Exponential fee hikes have recently occurred, such as a twenty-fold rise in tuition in a primarily government-funded medical school system. Similarly, preparation to write the medical school and residency admission exams (NEET-UG & NEET-PG) entails shelling out approximately fifty to one hundred thousand Indian rupees (₹; INR) per year, which may be further exacerbated by the newly proposed test for residency allotment (NEXT). As it stands, three barriers exists in becoming a specialised medical practitioner in India— NEET-UG to matriculate at a medical school, NEET-PG to qualify for a residency, and expenses associated with attending medical school. We discuss the current state of affairs and forthcoming changes, and describe how these may limit opportunities for Indian medical students, thereby depriving the and the Indian medical of qualified yet underprivileged candidates, and potentially aggravating the shortage of primary care physicians in the country.