分类： bharat

Dearth of MBBS seats along with difficulty in getting admissions in medical colleges is forcing aspiring Indian doctors to explore learning opportunities abroad. Thousands of such aspiring doctors have enrolled in foreign universities over the years, spent lakhs of rupees as tuition and accommodation fee, and dedicated 5-6 years pursuing the course. But latest data show this investment is proving to be unproductive for a majority with nearly 84 per cent failing to clear the mandatory test required to practice in India.

Indian laws allow students to pursue MBBS courses from universities abroad. But in order to get a license to practice in India, they are required to qualify the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE).

Clearing FMGE test is mandatory for all doctors who have earned their MBBS degree from a foreign country. Only those who earn their MBBS and post-graduate degrees from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US are exempted from this test. Besides earning their degrees from these five countries, these students (in case they want to practice in India) also have to be recognised for enrollment as medical practioners in the respective countries.

Replying to written questions in the Lok Sabha on November 29 and December 6 during the Winter Session of Parliament, the Union health ministry accepted that a majority of foreign-educated doctors are finding it hard to qualify the screening test.

Calling out these institutions for poor performance of their students, the government said they “admit Indian students without proper assessment” of the students’ academic ability to cope up with medical education, resulting in a situation where many students fail to qualify the screening test.

India’s supreme court has ordered the government to review all restrictions in Indian-controlled Kashmir within a week, saying the indefinite suspension of people’s rights amounted to an abuse of power.

Last August, Modi revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy and split the state into two territories under the direct control of Delhi. The move was followed by a series of draconian measures including curfews, the detention of political leaders and the cutting off of all communications including phones and the internet.

The government has gradually restored landlines, and SMS services were restored on 31 December, but 7 million Kashmiris still do not have online access in the longest internet shutdown ever imposed in a democracy.

The government has repeatedly justified the continued internet suspension as necessary for preserving human life and preventing terrorism. In its justification, it said no one had died.

The court said any suspension of the internet, which it called intrinsic to free speech, must be accompanied by detailed reasons to allow aggrieved persons to challenge it in court.

The ruling came in response to petitions filed by Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of the Kashmir Times, the opposition Congress party leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and others.

A death warrant has been issued for the four men convicted of the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, which galvanised protests across India and brought global attention to the country’s sexual violence epidemic.

A court in the Indian capital scheduled the hangings for 22 January, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

The warrant had been anticipated since India’s supreme court rejected one of the men’s final review pleas last month. The Indian president can still grant mercy, but this is not expected.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student referred to by Indian media as Nirbhaya, the Hindi word for fearless – because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified – was heading home from a cinema with a male friend in December 2012 when six men lured them on to a bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries.

The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death in 2013. Another hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family have insisted he was killed. The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and sentenced to three years in a reform institution.