While
returning the NEET Bill back to the state Government for re-consideration on
Feb 1, 2022, the Hon’ble Governor of Tamil Nadu had pointed out the biased
nature of the Rajan Committee Report. The High Level Committee to study the
impact of NEET on medical admissions in Tamil Nadu under the chairmanship of
Justice A K Rajan was appointed by the DMK Government in June 2021. The Report of the Committee is the basis for
the Bill passed by the state Government.
The
Governor finds the Report “utterly unconvincing” and notes that it “… merely reflects the jaundiced view of the
High Level Committee.” The Governor’s
letter to the Speaker of the legislative assembly further mentions that “the
report is based on several unsubstantiated sweeping assumptions” and mentions some
of them. They are:
· “NEET is directionless”
· “NEET is anti-merit. It enables and empowers
comparatively low-performing students to get admission to MBBS”
· “NEET has paved the way for entry of poorly skilled
candidates who are financially and socially strong and thus will make the
medical profession dominated by low quality professionals”
· “NEET discourages complex thinking and high order of
skilling compared to State Board Examinations.”
One
finds it difficult to comprehend how such statements could be made in a
state-appointed Committee Report after the NEET was introduced with the approval
of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. But there are many such statements throughout the
Report. Some more:
·
“NEET does not
seem to help achieve the much required diversity” p.7
·
“Students have to
pay a hefty fee for private coaching to get prepared for the NEET, which only
the affluent and rich people could afford to. Such negative consequences have
already discouraged and prevented the most vulnerable communities, like
socially depressed and backward, educationally and geographically backward, and
those who studied in Higher Secondary schools in Tamizh medium and that too in
Government, who enjoyed so far at least a little number of enrolments, though
disproportionate, before the NEET” pp.7-8
·
“Past few years of
its application in medical admission indicates that the NEET has caused an
unprecedented havoc and setback to the students of different social, economic
and demographic denominations aspiring for medical studies” p.12
·
NEET is “ …… a discrete arbitrary framework that is
politically driven” p.13
·
“ …. the union
government making it mandatorily a sole criterion for admission into medical
colleges, is a flaw, eccentrical and an injustice against both the spirit of
the constitution and people of the country” p.29
The
Governor’s letter also points out that the Report ignores “the sorry state of
affairs in the Government schools” and blames only the NEET for the meagre
number of students getting admissions in medical courses. To quote: “Statistics
cited in the Report shows that in the pre-NEET system only some 30-38 students
(hardly 1%) from the Government schools were able to get admission in Government
medical colleges. It reflects the sorry state of affairs in the Government
schools which mostly cater to the poor students. Ignoring this crucial fact
coming in the way of social justice, the Report instead goes off the tangent
and blames NEET.”
The
Report blames the NEET for everything using conveniently chosen data
selectively. But there also it has failed. The real problem for the poor
performance of the State Board and the Tamil medium students lies in the school
education system, which the Report is ardently trying to hide. It is an open
secret that over the last many years, many parents have been taking their
children out of the Tamil medium and the Government schools and are placing
them in the private matriculation and the
CBSE schools. The successive state Governments are also aware of the closure of
several Tamil medium schools over the past decade, much before the introduction
of NEET.
The
Report interprets the data to suit its convenience and makes conclusions based
on partial figures. Presenting the number of students
who have studied 12th standard under the State Board system and their size
(Table 7.7), it compares the number of Tamil and English medium students between
2011 and 2020. Then it says that in the
post-NEET period, the Tamil medium students size went down by 24.8% whereas that
of the English medium rose to 8.4% between the period of 2017 and 2020.
It
fails to take into account that the number of students studying in English
medium have continuously been increasing since 2011, but considers only the post-NEET
period and make conclusions. In fact, the increase in the number of English medium
students between 2011 and 2016 was as high as 42.6%. Before the introduction of
NEET, an average 14,569 students per year were joining English medium, but post-
NEET, it was only 6920 students per year.
But this was ignored.
Similarly,
while presenting the number of students studying in three different types of
schools, namely Government, Government aided and private in Table 7.9, the
Report says: “The trend indicates that until 2016,
both the Govt. Schools and Govt. Aided Schools have managed their student size
stable, while the private schools showed steady growth in its student size.
Post-NEET period, in the cases of Govt. and Govt. Aided Schools, the student
size fell down by 18.5% and 14.1% respectively, whereas, in the same period,
the private schools have maintained their student strength much unaltered”
The
actual percentage figures in the Table from 2011 to 2016 reveal that there was a
decline of students from the Government schools from 48.12% to 44.85% and the Government
Aided schools from 30.56% to 27.34%. Besides the increase of students in the
private schools from 2011 to 2016 was higher, but the Report ignores it.
Moreover,
the Report refuses to present the data leaving the columns blank while making
conclusion regarding MBBS admissions during the pre-NEET and the post- NEET
periods from from the different types of
schools, medium of instruction and management. It hides the data, by failing to
provide it in public, as it would be apparently against its pre-decided
conclusions. Hence there is no data for admissions from the Government and the
private schools from 2010-11 to 2013-14. But the data obtained through the RTI
reveals that the admissions from Government schools were between 18 and 23
students during these years, averaging 20 annually.
At the same time, it cannot hide the facts
completely as they are visible. So it had to accept that during the pre-NEET years,
the Tamil medium students obtained a “little share” and the Government students
“achieved a little number of seats, though it was so little.”
Moreover,
one could understand from the Report that even during the pre-NEET year 2016-17,
the share of Government school students getting medical admissions was 0.9 per
cent while it was 99.05 per cent for private schools. Similarly, during the
post-NEET year 2020-21, the share of Government school students was 8.42 per
cent. Besides, during the post –NEET period also, the students from the State
Board getting admissions into medical colleges increased from 2303 in 2017-18
to 2789 in 2020-21. Hence their own data disprove much of their conclusions.
Basically
the very constitution of the committee is not balanced. Two third of the
members are the higher officials of the state Government. Apart from the
Chairman, the two other individual members are those who oppose NEET. One of
them is a senior communist activist, who vehemently opposes all the policies of
the central Government. The other is an academic from engineering backgrounds. There
is not even one experienced academic from the field of medical education.
While
arguing for exemption, the Government claims that they are speaking for 80
million Tamils in the state and they had received opinions from one lakh
persons on NEET. Hence it says that the Report
must be accepted by all. But the Report mentions
that it received submissions from 86,342 persons, almost all of them through e
mails. Even when we take the population of the state during 2011 (72 millions
approximately), the percentage of people who gave their opinion was 0.001.
Among them, while 75.29 per cent opposed NEET, 21.96 percent supported it.
In
its conclusion, the Report states: “…… if
NEET continues for a few more years, the health care system of Tamil Nadu will
be very badly affected. There may not be enough doctors for being posted at the
various Primary Health Centres. There may not be enough expert doctors for
being employed in the Government Hospitals. Further the rural and urban poor
may not be able to join the medical courses. Ultimately Tamil Nadu may go back
to pre-independence days, where in small towns and in villages only “bare-foot”
doctors were catering for the needs were available. Tamil Nadu as a State would
go down in the rank among States, in the Medical and Health Care system”. p.146
There
is no doubt that this report - poorly
drafted with many errors-, is completely one-sided. It
is full of rhetoric with high political overtones. From the beginning it proceeds
with a preconceived notion
putting all the blame on the NEET, while burying every other thing under the
carpet.
Note:
The sentences quoted from the Report are presented as they are.
(Swarajya,
Feb.10, 2022)
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