Bureaucratic Bottleneck? Medical College approvals in Gujarat and in the rest of India remain in suspense

Ticking away towards the May 31 deadline, the National Medical Commission (NMC) appears to be leaving it very close to the wire. More than 735 medical colleges and almost 3,000 postgraduate courses—among them in Gujarat—are in suspended animation awaiting key inspections and approval. Alarming as it may sound, the NMC has not yet started the process of scrutinizing them.

This yearly ceremony of inspection and approval is nothing new. Every year, the NMC has to physically inspect new institutions and virtually inspect existing ones. However, even though this is an annual occurrence, the system appears to be caught short. According to sources, over 100 of the outstanding 735 colleges are new and, in accordance with the law, must be evaluated on a face-to-face basis. Add to that the staggering number of postgraduate programs—about 3,000—with nearly a third seeking seat expansion, and the challenge becomes even more immense.

Colleges have already sent their proposals for inspection, playing their part well in advance. It is now the regulator that seems ill-prepared. The lack of timely inspections can put the whole admission cycle off track, impacting thousands of future doctors and healthcare professionals. And if this was not alarming enough, there are murmurs within the system that the NMC just does not possess the personnel to carry out the required inspections across the country.

This case raises a number of questions: Why is the nation's highest medicine regulator rushing at the last minute? Why has the system not been expanded to catch up with the nation's growing healthcare education requirements? And most critically, who will be held responsible if approvals are not done on time?

The wider worry is that this kind of bureaucratic lag is more than a logistical glitch—it has potentially dire consequences for India's medical pipeline. A lag in admissions will be a lag in training the next generation of physicians, just when India's healthcare system needs them most.

It's time the NMC thought again, spends on timely planning, and possibly even decentralises some of its inspection work so that such traffic jams don't happen in the future. Because in a nation where demand for medical education is skyrocketing, the last thing we need is a traffic jam at the top.