MBBS in Hindi will promote mixopathy rather than improving allopathy: FAIMA National President

Shiksha spoke to Dr Rohan Krishnan, the National President and founding member of FAIMA, on the government's plan to commence MBBS in Hindi and also on many other significant issues, read here to know the details.

Recently, Amit Shah launched MBBS textbooks in Hindi in Madhya Pradesh, other states like UP, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra have also announced similar plans for the next academic session. On this, and many other issues, we spoke to Dr Rohan Krishnan, the National President and founding member of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), here are the excerpts:

Recently, on October 16, Amit Shah launched MBBS books in Hindi in MP and you said that it is a retrograde step, in what way it is a retrograde step?

It is a retrograde step because if you see ancient Indian medicine like homoeopathy, Ayurveda and AYUSH, these subjects are taught in Hindi and the prescriptions written by these doctors are also sometimes in Hindi. 

So, by promoting MBBS also in Hindi, it is kind of a retrograde step because now what we are doing is we are going far behind when the medical advancement has taken so much that we are right now being respected internationally. Indian doctors are being accepted globally and respected globally. 

If we will make unnecessary changes and that too such an important change that the students will not be able to read in English, then it will be very difficult for these students to go abroad for any other courses, or to go for fellowships of our students exchange programme. 

Even, while practising in their own states they will face problems because the people will get confused because of the same kinds of prescriptions and it is a kind of step which will promote mixopathy rather than improving allopathy.

The government says that there are other countries also which offer medical courses in their national and local languages. How do you look at this?

First of all, as I already said that Indian doctors are respected and accepted globally. Internationally we are having good recognition. Indian doctors are leading one of the top hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, London, and be it any country. 

So one major reason is that the studying pattern is the same, we are cognizant of the internationally accepted education for medical sciences. Now, in the countries the government is talking about be it Russia, China, Ukraine and all these countries, the doctors are not respected as much as the Indian doctors are respected. 

Also, the Indian government itself allows people who have done MBBS and equivalent courses from six English-speaking countries to directly practice here in India. These six countries are – Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, New Zealand and South Africa. Whereas Indian students who are studying MBBS in countries like Russia, China, and Ukraine, need to clear the FMGE exam to practice in India. 

So, the Indian standard has maintained that MBBS should be in English. Secondly, if we talk about IITs, IIMs, CAT or any other courses, such issues are not being raised, their curriculum is in English, then why do so much experimentation with the course which deals with human lives, with humanity itself, with a course which is completely built upon the trust of a doctor and a patient. 

There are many studies which have shown that if a patient trusts the doctors, the chances of the improvement of the disease are much higher when there is a lack of trust. Thirdly, when the government is talking about medical tourism, on one hand, the Prime Minister wants that patients from other countries come to India and get treated here, then how it is going to happen that we are planning to work on a global platform and on the other hand we are promoting something which is actually regionalism and will add no value in future.

Moreover, for taking admission to the MBBS course, there is only one examination - NEET UG exam through which anyone can go from one state to another state. I personally belong to Delhi but I completed my MBBS from Bangalore and it goes vice versa. There must be many students from Tamil Nadu doing MBBS from Madhya Pradesh. 

Now, the government is saying that we are not forcing, we are giving options but you can give options for self-study, not for teaching patterns. Suppose, if I am in Tamil Nadu and the teacher feels comfortable teaching in Tamil, then what I am going to learn, even if I have chosen English, I am not going to learn anything in such a scenario because the universally accepted language for teaching the curriculum has completely vanished. 

So, giving such lame excuses that in many countries, these things are happening makes no good to us because are we going to look at India as a country which will emerge as an International medical hub or as a country which will follow other countries where the doctors and patients relationship status is very bad be it Russia and Ukraine. 

These countries do not have the healthcare infrastructure which we are having right now. Finally, for most of the journals and research which are happening, our country is lagging behind in research methodology, and in promoting research, and right now we are training graduates at a very low level. 

The medical colleges are not teaching properly due to the lack of teaching faculties in these institutes, there are so many nexus of teaching institutes going on for PG exams. If you have been taught well during your UG medical programmes, then what will be the requirement of the PG coaching institutes and why these coaching companies are flourishing to become a multi-billionaire industry? So, this is also due to the lack of proper teaching in medical colleges. 

It is very important that we focus on proper teaching in medical institutions rather than experimentation and regionalism because if Madhya Pradesh has done this other states' politicians will also use it as a political stunt and announce MBBS in their regional languages. NMC not objecting to this step is laughable and it is a mockery of the NMC and health care system of the country. 

NMC looks completely politicised and the organisation holds no value, there is no trust in a doctor like me who is heading an organisation towards NMC because NMC is not doing anything and has become the puppet organisation of the government which was not its ideology when it was established, this is a very sad and serious situation. 

I have seen that they are giving permission to medical colleges, where even proper CBSE schools can not run and those colleges are being given permission for MBBS degrees just to promote and produce some numbers, we are actually deteriorating the quality so much that in the coming 10 years, India will be in a very bankrupt state when it comes to health care infrastructure.

What do you think are the challenges in providing medical education in Hindi and other regional languages?

There will be no availability of textbooks or research materials. In India we are not doing any kind of drug research, there is no cohort in prospective studies which is going on in India, we are completely dependent on FDA trials and whenever there are interpretations, suppose I say something in English and you convert it to Tamil, there is always some kind of biases, errors, and these are unnecessarily put on students which I don’t think is going to help anyone. 

There will be a lack of proper teaching. Right now also, the situation is not very good, there are colleges run by ghost faculties, and there are just buildings and infrastructure and nothing else, I have seen even in government colleges. In this way, I think we are playing with the future of the country. The students who took admissions to these colleges, will not learn anything and we will be giving them the license to kill, which is certainly very bad. 

We should focus on medical teachers also. This is a very sad state of the country, we cannot say that you can learn in Hindi and other languages also, because if you divide like this, the teaching facilities which are already declining in this country, will decline further. Now, the teacher will also say that Ok fine I will teach in Hindi itself. You have to make students understand and by just increasing the number of beds you cannot increase the number of students. 

This is the mathematical equation that the government is not understanding and what they are doing is suppose if it is a 500 bedded hospital with 100 students intake, they say let’s add one more building and make it a 1000 bedded hospital and increase the medical seats to 250. Now, when you increase the seats by just increasing the number of beds, it is not going to help anyone, you have to increase the number of teachers. 

Earlier when Lady Hardinge Medical College was being established, there were only 12 MBBS seats there, and now today it has 250 seats. If you will keep on increasing the number of seats, the quality is going to be jeopardised. In a batch of 250 and 300, how much you can learn? Similarly, if you will go to private institutes or government medical colleges, they have huge campuses and infrastructure but nothing else, no patients, no teachers, what is the point of this and NMC is everyday relaxing the criteria.

 It is not taking proper inspection, many colleges are not being inspected annually and they are being given permission by saying that they will inspect next year and something like this, so, NMC is not holding any value. 

Also, if students will study MBBS in Hindi, will it create problems when getting jobs after the course gets completed?

I have also tweeted not to choose MBBS in Hindi. Suppose I am running a hospital in Delhi and if I have to choose between someone who has done MBBS in English and one who has done in Hindi, obviously, I will choose the one who completed the course in English because personally there will be biases that the person who has done in English has read the textbook in the version the writer has written. As Gita is written in various other languages, but the actual thing written in Sanskrit is the purest.

Also, if I am running a corporate hospital and international patients are going to come then what will be a person who studied MBBS in Hindi will of any use? Forget about the foreigner, even if someone will come from Maharashtra for treatment, the situation will be the same. If we have accepted English as the language in the country for higher education, then we have to respect it also, just by changing the language, we are not doing anything innovative.

Tamil Nadu seeks exemption from NEET as they say NEET supports affluent candidates and gives no scope to poor candidates, what do you have to say about their demands to provide MBBS and BDS admissions based on Class 12 marks?

I was in Tamil Nadu last September and I met around 400, 500 delegations of students there. Earlier I was also against their demand but what they are saying is in Tamil Nadu, the students have no idea about the coaching institutes offering coaching on how to prepare for NEET. The students there are not being taught anything about the NEET exam which is happening. 

The point they have raised is also true that right now if you have to prepare for an undergraduate examination and you take coaching then a minimum of INR 2-3 lakhs is the coaching fee, and for PG preparations, it is even higher. 

Their demand is simple, earlier in TN, there were two exams, one was CBSE in the India category for 50% of the seats and for the rest of the seats, the state used to conduct the exam. So, admissions based on just Class 12 mark, I don’t think is going to be possible because many students will have the same grades and will get the same seats and in an entrance exam you have to give rank-wise allotment, so based on Class 12 mark, I don’t think rank wise allotment can be done, so if we consider the earlier pattern where a state exam was also conducted, I think that pattern was better than this pattern. 

Also, there is only one exam because this pattern is also a copy of which is being followed in the US and UK, that one nation one exam but what they do, they conduct exams very frequently, every four months or five months there is an exam, you can take the exam whenever you want, so a lot of conveniences is there but if you see our country, India is lagging behind in conducting one exam in one year, right now we are having the counselling of 2022 in November which should have been over by January, so we are 11 months behind in conducting the exam for once a year also, it will delay the next year exam also because last year backlog is not clear. 

Also, students feel that suppose on one bad day they might meet an accident or due to other reasons not able to appear in the NEET then they need to wait for the entire year, so there should be a state-level exam and a national-level exam. I think that their demand is pretty genuine and I support it.

Read more:

• MBBS in Hindi is retrograde step: FAIMA National President
• MBBS in Hindi will harm national interest, says FAIMA