India can’t stop saying it needs more doctors, but every year, the system quietly admits something else: it can’t fill the postgraduate seats it has.
After multiple rounds of NEET-PG counselling, reports this season indicate over 18,000 PG seats are vacant at one stage across MD/MS/DNB streams. This is an eye-popping number in a country where hospitals run on Residents and waiting rooms run on patience!
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The government’s response is predictable, as it has been for the past five years. An unfilled PG seat in India is seen as “wasted investment." This is not false. A training seat in government and private institutes costs crores of rupees.
The argument therefore is a simple one; fill those seats and do so fast. Unfortunately, this is also where the debate turns from administrative to being risky. Because medicine is not a numbers game but a high-stakes profession where “seat utilisation” means
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