NEET-PG Cutoff Collapse: Do We Want Doctors Or Trusted Doctors
NEET-PG counselling this year produced an unusual headline. Postgraduate medical seats, including clinical branches, were allotted at extremely low and even negative marks after authorities sharply reduced qualifying percentiles to avoid thousands of vacant seats. What looked like a technical administrative decision has quietly triggered a deeper national question: do we want more doctors on paper, or doctors the public trusts without hesitation?
Why The Government Lowered The NEET-PG Cutoff
The decision did not emerge from nowhere. Over the past decade India rapidly expanded postgraduate medical seats across government and private colleges. The assumption was simple: more seats would automatically mean more specialists and better healthcare access. Reality turned out different.
Many branches such as anatomy, microbiology and transfusion medicine routinely go vacant. Private college fees often run into tens of lakhs. Some hospitals lack infrastructure and learning exposure. Urban concentration of doctors means remote postings remain unattractive. Add migration abroad and lifestyle choices of young graduates, and suddenly India has a paradox. The country produces thousands of MBBS graduates competing fiercely for entry, yet struggles to fill several postgraduate seats.
The government therefore faced a blunt choice. Leave seats empty and hospitals understaffed, or relax eligibility and produce specialists anyway. It chose availability over selectivity.
The Merit Debate Is Missing The Real Issue
Public debate quickly shifted to merit versus reservation, but that framing is misleading. Even general category candidates avoided certain branches and institutions. The vacancies were not created by category quotas; they were created by economic incentives and career prospects.
The cutoff reduction was essentially a capacity management tool. The system expanded training infrastructure faster than it expanded the attractiveness of medical careers within that infrastructure. When supply rises without improving conditions, entry standards inevitably fall. What people interpret as a fairness issue is actually a workforce planning issue.
How Trust In Doctors Gets Affected
Healthcare is unlike other professions. A patient cannot personally evaluate a surgeon’s skill or a physician’s diagnostic reasoning. Society therefore depends on institutional certification. The degree itself acts as a guarantee.
When entry standards visibly weaken, the guarantee weakens too. The public does not analyse percentile mathematics or counselling rules. It forms a simple psychological conclusion that the filtering system failed. Once that happens, judgement shifts from qualification to perception. Doctors begin to be evaluated socially rather than professionally.
This is where the real danger lies. A system designed to produce more specialists may unintentionally create suspicion around the very people it trains. A trust deficit in medicine spreads far beyond admission policy. It influences patient cooperation, treatment adherence and even safety inside hospitals.
Shortage Of Specialists Versus Credibility Of Healthcare
India genuinely needs more specialists, especially outside major cities. On paper, filling seats helps statistics and improves doctor-population ratios. But healthcare functions on legitimacy as much as manpower.
A hospital staffed by professionals the public doubts cannot function effectively. Patients delay treatment, seek multiple opinions and distrust prescriptions. The long-term cost of credibility loss may exceed the short-term benefit of filling vacancies. Numbers solve availability, not confidence.
The Missing Safeguard India Needs Now
If entry filters become flexible, exit filters must become stronger. The logical solution is a strict national licensing examination and transparent clinical competency assessment before independent practice.
Such a system changes the narrative completely. Instead of asking who entered the program, society asks who proved competence at the end of training. A tough exit standard protects patients and protects young doctors from suspicion. The degree regains its meaning as proof of ability rather than proof of admission.
India’s real choice is not between merit and representation. It is between numerical expansion and institutional legitimacy. The country does not merely need more doctors. It needs doctors the public instinctively trusts. Filling seats may solve a staffing problem, but guaranteeing competence solves a confidence problem. Only the second one secures the future of healthcare.
