In The Media ⁽⁴⁰⁰⁾

The Economic Times February 5, 2018 Read full article As the Parliamentary Standing Committee deliberates the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill, 2017, fog around it must be cleared. Vested interests have deliberately created some of this fog. Corruption, low quality and slow expansion have been the hallmarks of medical education under the current Medical Council of India (MCI) regime. With a small self-interested and self-perpetuating clique of doctors controlling the MCI for decades, the top scholars and practitioners of medicine have simply quit playing any role whatsoever in shaping medical education. Therefore, the NMC Bill makes a conscious effort to bring the best in the profession to the centre stage of regulation. The Bill proposes that a committee of unimpeachable integrity headed by the Cabinet Secretary select the members of the National Medical Commission and its four boards. One hopes that the guiding lights of the disciplines are ready to step up to the plate. The Bill proposes to place quality in medical education at the centre of the regulatory process. Under the MCI, regulation has focused solely on enforcing strict infrastructure and personnel norms, which…

January 15, 2018 The Economic Times Read full article Nothing explains India’s job creation challenge better than a comparison between Reliance Industries (RIL) and Shahi Exports. While RIL is a familiar name to nearly all, most readers would not have heard of Shahi Exports. If we are to solve our jobs problem, this needs to change. The RIL reports $110 billion in assets and 250,000 employees across its various ventures. Therefore, it employs five workers for each $2.2 million in assets. Shahi Exports, which is India’s largest apparel exporter, has assets worth $185 million and employs 106,000 workers in its apparel factories. Therefore, it employs 1,260 workers for every $2.2 million in assets. For the same investment, Shahi Exports creates 252 times the jobs that RIL does. Jobs that Shahi Exports creates are what India needs most today. Its factories can take someone with fifth-grade education and impart necessary training in just six weeks. On average, these workers earn Rs 15,000 a month. About 60% of Shahi Exports employees are women. If we could rapidly multiply what Shahi Exports does, we could begin expanding formal-sector jobs…

Read full article Abstract: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed a committee under my chairmanship to draft a new regulatory bill to transform medical education in India, he was responding to a clarion call from Parliament. In March 2016, a report by the Rajya Sabha-led Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare described in detail the rot that had set into medical education in India under the aegis of the Medical Council of India (MCI). It went on to call upon the government to bring about wholesale change in the way medical education is regulated. The concluding paragraph of the Standing Committee Report is worth recalling here: “To sum up, the Committee observes … that the need for major institutional changes in the regulatory oversight of the medical profession in the country is so urgent that it cannot be deferred any longer. The Committee is, however, aware that any attempt at overhauling the regulatory framework will face huge challenges from the deeply entrenched vested interests who will try to stall and derail the entire exercise. But if the medical…

Parliament h​as a historic opportunity to not only save medical education from “total collapse” but also bring about a renaissance in the field. For the good of the nation, let us hope it successfully meets the challenge.Read full article When Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed a committee under my chairmanship to draft a new regulatory bill to transform medical education in India, he was responding to a clarion call from Parliament. In March 2016, a report by the Rajya Sabha-led Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare described in detail the rot that had set into medical education in India under the aegis of the Medical Council of India (MCI). It went on to call upon the government to bring about wholesale change in the way medical education is regulated. The concluding paragraph of the Standing Committee Report is worth recalling here: “To sum up, the Committee observes … that the need for major institutional changes in the regulatory oversight of the medical profession in the country is so urgent that it cannot be deferred any longer. The Committee…

The Economic Times December 18, 2017 Read full articleIt has been asserted by leading figures in the recent election campaign whose results will be known today that the ‘Gujarat Model’ has enriched only the top 1% of the population, that it has helped only ‘five to ten’ industrialists, and that it has done nothing for Dalits and tribals. While debates during election campaigns are intensely political, and one must resist attaching excessive significance to what is said in the midst of them, these claims have far too important implications for our policy choice to be left unscrutinised. But first let me clarify what is meant by the ‘Gujarat Model’, at least to me. I had first used this term in juxtaposition to the ‘Kerala Model’ in the 2012 book, India’s Tryst With Destiny, jointly authored with my Columbia University colleague Professor Jagdish Bhagwati. As we later explained in an interview in this newspaper (‘Gujarat Promises Continued, Accelerated and All-Around Progress: Jagdish Bhagwati & Arvind Panagariya,’ June 20, 2013, goo.gl/B4vskd), “‘Kerala Model’ in our book is a metaphor for a primarily redistribution and State-driven…