I write this with a heavy heart.
A few days ago I read about a young medical aspirant from eastern Uttar Pradesh who went to an unfathomable extreme: he deliberately amputated part of his own foot to try to qualify under the disability quota for a medical college seat [news report]. The headlines were horrifying; the reality behind them is even more complicated.
What I felt first
I have spent years thinking and writing about the pressures around NEET and medical admissions. I warned about the scale of competition and the collateral damage it causes when systems compress youth aspirations into a single, high‑stakes outcome One Lucky : 23 Unlucky ?. Reading about this incident made me confront, in the rawest way, the human cost of that compression.
Three fractures of a system
This one act is a symptom. There are at least three systemic failures I see clearly:
Educational bottleneck: Millions of aspirants chase a far smaller number of seats. When supply is so far below demand, some will feel pushed toward desperate acts rather than safer alternatives.
Lack of meaningful counseling and mental‑health support: Repeated failure under intense social expectation damages judgment. We still treat exam stress as a private problem rather than a public health issue.
Policy and process vulnerability: Reservation and support systems for persons with disabilities are essential. But any system that can be gamed — or appears so to the desperate — needs stronger, compassionate safeguards and checks that stop misuse without penalizing genuinely needy people.
What we must not do
Do not reduce this to simple moralizing. Labeling the young aspirant as only ‘fraudulent’ or ‘criminal’ misses the context of family pressure, career scarcity, and poor mental‑health support.
Do not weaponize the incident as an argument against reservation for persons with disabilities. Disability quotas are a necessary corrective for centuries of exclusion; the right response is to strengthen, not remove, protections.
Practical fixes I believe in
I will be blunt: small tweaks won’t be enough. Here’s a layered approach I think could reduce the odds of tragedies like this.
- Expand meaningful capacity
Invest in more medical seats with careful geographic and specialty planning so supply meets aspiration more closely.
Create accredited mid‑level health cadres and expanded allied health pathways with real career ladders so medicine isn’t the only respectable route.
- Rethink the assessment architecture
Move from a single dead‑end, single‑day exam model toward staged, modular assessments and multiple entry pathways (so one bad day doesn’t wreck a life).
Use robust verification, multidisciplinary medical boards, and digital records for disability certification that are fast, transparent, and humane.
- Build mental‑health and career counseling into the admission pipeline
Mandatory, free counseling for repeat aspirants; early warning systems for burnout.
Career‑diversification programs that show realistic alternatives and long‑term prospects.
- Strengthen safeguards without stigmatizing
Audit and strengthen disability certification processes, with timelines that respect urgency and dignity.
Ensure disciplinary action for deliberate falsification while simultaneously creating pathways for rehabilitation and mental‑health care instead of purely punitive outcomes.
What I ask of institutions and citizens
Policymakers: Treat medical education capacity and exam design as long‑term public goods. Short‑term signalling (promises of new colleges without capacity) will not reduce pressure.
Exam authorities: Invest in candidate support systems, anti‑malpractice technology, and accessible grievance channels.
Families and communities: Create safety nets for children who do not clear exams at first — emotionally and financially — instead of tying entire identities to a single outcome.
Where I have written about this before
This incident is consistent with the dynamics I described earlier: mass participation in high‑stakes exams creates winners and an overwhelming number of people left without clear alternatives One Lucky : 23 Unlucky ? and my reflections on capacity and career choices around medical education NEET : Reducing Cut Off marks won’t help.
A final personal note
It is easy to react with shock, anger, or mockery. I feel all of those, but I also feel grief. Grief for a young life bent toward self‑harm by a system that treats education as a winner‑takes‑all competition. If we care about the future of healthcare, equality and justice, we must treat this as more than a criminal case: it is a policy and public‑health emergency.
We can fix many of the structural issues that make such tragedies possible — but only if we stop pretending that the status quo is acceptable.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
Any questions / doubts / clarifications regarding this blog? Just ask (by typing or talking) my Virtual Avatar on the website embedded below. Then "Share" that to your friend on WhatsApp.
References
- News coverage summarising the incident: Hindustan Times reporting on the aspirant who severed his foot to claim disability quota benefits [report].
- My earlier reflections on NEET pressure and capacity: One Lucky : 23 Unlucky ? and NEET : Reducing Cut Off marks won’t help.
Get correct answer to any question asked by Shri Amitabh Bachchan on Kaun Banega Crorepati, faster than any contestant
Hello Candidates :
- For UPSC – IAS – IPS – IFS etc., exams, you must prepare to answer, essay type questions which test your General Knowledge / Sensitivity of current events
- If you have read this blog carefully , you should be able to answer the following question:
- Need help ? No problem . Following are two AI AGENTS where we have PRE-LOADED this question in their respective Question Boxes . All that you have to do is just click SUBMIT
- www.HemenParekh.ai { a SLM , powered by my own Digital Content of more than 50,000 + documents, written by me over past 60 years of my professional career }
- www.IndiaAGI.ai { a consortium of 3 LLMs which debate and deliver a CONSENSUS answer – and each gives its own answer as well ! }
- It is up to you to decide which answer is more comprehensive / nuanced ( For sheer amazement, click both SUBMIT buttons quickly, one after another ) Then share any answer with yourself / your friends ( using WhatsApp / Email ). Nothing stops you from submitting ( just copy / paste from your resource ), all those questions from last year’s UPSC exam paper as well !
- May be there are other online resources which too provide you answers to UPSC “ General Knowledge “ questions but only I provide you in 26 languages !
No comments:
Post a Comment