The issue of the poor stipend being paid to medical students studying in self-financing and private medical colleges in the country seems to have finally caught the attention of the National Medical Commission (NMC), which has announced the initiation of a survey among students to ascertain the stipend details.
While NMC’s attempts to study the issue of student stipends is very welcome, the NMC’s own regulation on student stipends — Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship regulations, 2021 — is pretty vague on the stipend that needs to be paid to MBBS interns, it is pointed out.
“Clause 6.3 on stipends in NMC’s regulations on medical internships just states that the stipend shall be fixed by the appropriate fee-fixing authority with respect to the university/institution. This in itself has given the opportunity for private medical college managements to deny decent stipend to MBBS interns,” says Babu K.V., a public health activist.
The issue of interns or house surgeons in private medical colleges being paid a pittance as stipend by college managements, while their counterparts in government medical colleges enjoyed a decent stipend, has been a serious complaint raised by medical students for a long time.
In 2019, the then Medical Council of India (MCI) had issued a notice that all students pursuing compulsory rotating internship at the institution from which they completed MBBS course, shall be paid stipend on a par with that paid to the interns of the State/Central government medical institutions. However, the Board of Governors was dissolved before this notification could be gazetted.
NMC replaces MCI
The NMC, which replaced the MCI following the latter’s dissolution in 2020, however, did not endorse this. In fact, it weakened the position earlier adopted by the MCI in the matter of student stipend.
Clause 6.3 of NMC’s Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship regulations, 2021, through its notification on Undergraduate Medical Education states that “all interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate fee fixation authority as applicable to the institution/university/State”.
The NMC should redraft this clause and specify that the students of private medical colleges shall be paid “stipend on a par with the amount being paid to the interns of the State government medical institution / Central government medical institution in the State/union territory where the institution is located”, if it is serious about looking into the issue of student stipends, says Dr. Babu.
‘Redraft clause’
In fact, many public health professionals had suggested that this clause be redrafted, when the NMC first published its draft regulation in April 2021, inviting public suggestions. However, the NMC ignored it all and gazetted the draft regulation without any changes.
In July 2021, the issue of the discrimination in stipend was brought to the notice of the National Human Rights Commission by an intern from Kerala. It is following an order of NHRC dated February 24, 2023, that the NMC has now decided to conduct a survey amongst private medical college students about the stipend they receive.
