Medical Education in India: A Synopsis

This is a compilation of the most up to date data on Medical education in India:

1. Medical Education(Doctors) Summary:This document contains the number of seats available in each Indian State in all systems of medicine: Allopathy (MBBS and BDS) and AYUSH(Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homepathy).

2.Pharmacy Education Summary: This document contains the number of seats available per State in colleges that award Degrees and Diploma in Pharmacy as also those that only conduct the courses that lead to a Degree or Diploma.

3. Nursing Education Summary: This document contains the number of seats in BSc Nursing and Post Basic Nursing programs per State.

4. Medical Education Summary: This document contains the summary of the above data along with references.

The data has been collected from respective governing bodies homepages and appropriate references are provided. Related and similar data is available on Ministry of Health and Family Welfare but that is not complete from the point of view of available educational opportunities in Medical Sector. The references in document point to complete List of respective colleges along-with their contacts and addresses.

Some Observations:

1. There is huge inequality in availability of opportunities for Students across States as exhibited by following graphs:

The first image shows the number of Seats in Medical Stream per thousand students in Standard 1 presently. This captures, the inequality with respect to overall population of a State irrespective of the learning environment and outcomes that make a Student eligible to lay claim to these opportunities.

The second image shows the number of Seats available per thousand Students passing out of 12th Class. This can be a reflection on better opportunities available in some states as also poor Graduation Candidate Ratio in other states. In Karnataka both are extreme and hence disproportionately higher number of opportunities available for Karnataka Students. If we contrast the two images, we get an idea that increasing retention at the Secondary level puts pressure on the availability of higher education opportunities even in Backward States like Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.

These extreme inequalities also indicate that their is no such concept called India as far as Medical Education is concerned with some big states like Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal along-with North Eastern States barely visible on the first graph. Just 4 States: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu constituting just about 20% of India's population account for about 1.3 lakh out of about 2.4 lakh Seats across India.

2. The educational opportunities in Medical sector (predictably) has a high correlation with health infrastructure as well. In absence of adequate data on number of beds or doctors or Clinical establishment per State, we can probably use Blood banks as a proxy. The 5 States of Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have 1085 out of total 2347 Blood banks in the country. If we look at Eye Banks, these 5 States again come up trumps with 306 of the 586 Eye Banks in the country present in these States.

3. Looking at Mental health, the top states again dominate with 1364 out of 2294 psychiatrists. Contrast this with just 12 in Madhya Pradesh, 15 in Chattisgarh, 19 in Odisha and 28 in Bihar. True, in most states,including top 5, number of psychiatrists available is less than half required in case of most of the rest it is not even 10%. The number of Psychiatrists, Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatric Social workers that we need are 10261, 14057 and 20194 respectively while the availability is 2294, 355 and 294 respectively.

4. Though it is Kerala which is famous for its Kerala Ayurveda, number of Seats in Ayurveda for Kerala is just 896 which is less than a third of those in neighboring Karnataka and less than a fourth of those in Maharashtra.However Kerala if famous for good reason, notwithstanding number of students admitted, Kerala leads with 124 Ayurvedic Hospitals and 740 dispensaries in contrast to Karnataka's 130+561 and Maharashtra's 55+469 Hospitals+Dispensaries.

5. Bihar accompanies Madhya Pradesh as the only States where number of Seats in Homeopathy is more than those in MBBS. The former is 830 and 1755 respectively while latter number is 660 for Bihar and 1070 for MP. It is Maharashtra though which has the highest number of Homeopathy colleges(49) admitting 3596 students which is close to its 41 MBBS colleges admitting 4570 students.

6.Just 3 States: Andhra, Karnataka and Maharashtra account for half of the Diploma/Degree Seats in Pharmacy i.e. 38680 out of 77195.

7. Karnataka churns out 1/4th of all Indian nurses with 18958 seats out of all India 74356. In contrast, the 19 States from bottom have less than half that number of total Seats.

8.Uttar Pradesh tops the number of Seats in the Unani System of medicine with 220 out of 620 Seats across India.

School Education in India:An Integrated picture

Despite the well recognized challenge and payoffs of Human Development and education attainment, it is hard to find a single report or data source that gives an overall picture of educational attainment for India. If at all, the data is available with a time lag of 3 years by which time Indian economy might grow 30% rendering it obsolete. This blog had earlier looked at state level data about Engineering education. Continuing further, this article and the associated document describes the overall Statewise education scenario for India from enrollments in Class 1 upto statistics about number of students passing out of Class 12th. The data source is primarily DISE and the newspaper reports about the results of different State and Central Examination boards. The document also contain the enrollment and qualification data by gender by using the

Gender based Exam results publications. The latest available enrollment data for upper primary is for Year 2007-08 and hence compatible and comparable with the Matriculation results of current year 2009-10. But the data for Intermediate classes cannot be strictly compared to that for matriculation due to 2 year lag and hence can only be indicative of broad picture.

Here are some interesting observations:

1. Karnataka, home state of the knowledge capital of India, Bangalore has a GCR(Graduation Candidature ratio) of 17.83 just marginally less worse than the most backward state Madhya Pradesh in this regard which has a GCR of 17.96. This means only 1 out of 10 students in his age group attains the eligibility to apply for admission to a college. Delhi is the best state on this count with a GCR of 64.4 with Tamil Nadu a distant 2nd at 55.79 and Himachal 3rd with GCR of 48.26
2. Gujarat,an otherwise economically advanced state has a shockingly low GER of 54% at upper primary level resulting in a poor GCR of 23.30%. Only States that have a worst Upper primary GER than Gujarat are UP and Bihar. In terms of GCR, Gujarat is 6th worst among all States.
3. At all India level there were 1.64 Crore students in upper primary and surprisingly 1.66Crore students in Matric level.This partly indicates inaccuracy in DISE numbers and partly a high number of repeaters and overaged students.Noteable high ratio of Upper Primary to matric are UP-1.61 and Jharkhand-1.24. This means that for every 10 matric students, there were 6 students in 8th Class in UP and 8 students in Jharkhand. Given that both of these states have passing rate of about 70%, even if we accept all 30% who failed are repeating where are the extra 30% in UP coming from?Certainly,UP did not experience any population boom induced by some astrologically auspicious phenomenon or any immigration shock.
4. There were total 96.6 lakh students in 12th Class out of which 77.5 lakhs passed.Since there are about 8.6 Lakh engineering seats,every 9th Graduation candidate can opt for engineering.
5. The overall pass percentage hides the poor pass percentage in constiuent disciplines in some States. For example, in case of Jharkhand, Science pass percentage was is 30.33 though overall pass percentage is 50.39.
6. The matriculation pass percentage of Jharkhand has dropped from 87% in 2008 to 74.3% in 2010. Jharkhand is probably the only state to witness so much deterioration in Education attainment while most of the States have improved theirs. Chief Minister Shibu Soren was perhaps the only Chief Minister to personally release the result.
7. Similar to Gujarat, West Bengal has a low ratio of students reaching potential graduation stage at 22.51 inconsistent with its image of an intellectuals' state.
8. The national capital seems to have the best educational infrastructure what with 64.44% students attaining graduation candidature but this is tempered by the fact that there is only 1 engineering seat per 30 students passing out of 12th class as against the national average of 1:9
9. Kerala is at the top in terms of gender parity with 72% of 12th students being girls whereas the ratio is almost inverted for the state on the other end of spectrum Rajasthan with 35% of students being girls.
10. In Punjab,a state with a very low sex ratio, 56% of the students in 10th class are girls whereas the last state on this count is Gujrat with only 37% girl students in 10th class.
11. Leadership of Tamilnadu in education is exhibited by 115% GER in upper primary, 80% of them transitioning to matric, pass percentage of both 10th and 12th standard being in 80s and 2nd highest number of Engineering seats among all States.
12. Some of the north eastern states like Tripura and Manipur have a greater number of graduation candidates than better known Goa.
13. The number of children in 8th standard is only about half of the number in 1st standard despite an upper primary GER of 75% for All India.
14. In case of Jharkhand there are 5 students in 1st standard for every student in Class 8th and Jharkhand only has a GER of 57 for upper primary.
15. A happy thing to note is that there are at least 9 states where number of students in 1st standard is lesser than those currently in 8th and there are 3 others where this gap is less than 10%. Hence,the next generation in these States is likely to get better educational facilities. BIMARU states are still not out of the woods and need to invest more in primary education going forward given the high ratio of number of students currently entering the School system to those in upper primary.

Finances of States owned PSEs: Power Sector

The consolidated excel sheet has been updated after cleaning and correcting the data in some places.The summary stats for Power sector are here.This post will focus on Power sector.(All numbers are approximate with less significant digits omitted)

Aggregate Data

1. This sector has a turnover of 1.9 lakh crores and employs 7.7 lakh persons. The total accumulated losses for the sector are Rs 32k crores.The turnover per employee is hence Rs 22 lakh. There is a wide variation around this figure with Orissa at the top with Rs 55lakhs in contrast to Rs 6.8 lakhs for Bihar.
2. The two industrial states of Gujarat and Maharashtra have the highest revenue at about Rs 27k crores and 20k crores respectively. Maharashtra has double the number of employees(1.16lakh) of Gujarat(56k).This is clearly reflected in their profitability with Gujarat having a profit of 628 crores(2nd highest in the country) in contrast to Maharshtra's 117 crores.
3. UP comes third with a turnover of Rs 20k crores whose manpower is not completely reported, followed by AP at Rs 18k crores.UP has the distinction of having highest losses and highest accumulated losses at about 2.6k crores and 11k crores respectively.
4. Karntaka and TamilNadu come next with revenue of about 14k crores each.While Karnatka employs 42 thousand; TamilNadu employs almost twice that(78k) .No wonder, Karnatka is making a profit of Rs 462 crores while TN is making a loss of Rs 1328 crores.
5. Further down the list, Haryana has a revenue of 13k crores with an employee base of 33k while next door Punjab earns about half that(Rs 7k crores) with more than double the number of employees (73k ). Punjab's revenue per employee of Rs 9.5 lakhs is only beaten by Bihar(Rs 6.8 lakhs) and Himachal Pradesh (Rs8.6 lakh) . But even than, their percentage losses at 8% and 1% are much less than Punjab's 23%.Hence,Electricity reforms in Punjab are inevitable; despite this.
6. The two mineral rich states of Orissa and Chhatisgarh have the highest profit margins of 19% and 10% respectively with Kerala coming a distant third at 5%.However,there is considerable scope for the latter two states to cut the flab having Revenue per employee of only Rs 17 lakhs and Rs 24 lakhs respectively in contrast to Orissa's Rs55lakhs.
   

Company level data
There are total 93 companies in power sector 14 of which have not reported any accounts.

Turnover

1. There are 46 companies with revenues of more than Rs 1kcrore aggregating to 1.77lakh crores
2. There are 32 companies with revenues of more than 2kcrore aggregating to 1.56lakh crores
3. There are 14 companies with revenues of more than 4kcrores aggregating to 1.05lakh crores
4. There are 4 companies with revenues of more than 10kcrores aggregating to 50kcrores

Profit
There are total 41 companies that are profitable earning a total of 5128crore rupees. Of these:

1. 14 companies earn more than 100crores totalling 4516crores
2. 8 companies earn more than 200crores totalling 3616crores
3. 3 companies earn more than 500crores totalling 2317crores

Losses
There are total 33 loss making companies making total losses of Rs 8044 crore.UP alone accounts for 1/3rd of these losses with Punjab and TamilNadu accounting for another 1/3rd.

1. 19 companies are making losses of more than Rs 50 crores totalling 7707 crores
2. 16 companies are making losses of more than Rs 200 crores totalling 7397 crores
3. 10 companies are making losses of more than Rs300 crores totalling 5934 crores
4. 3 companies are making losses of more than Rs3546 crores totalling 3546 crores

This short summary clearly demonstrates that some states have just too many employees and they are a serious roadblock to reforms of this sector.The 6th pay commission is only going to aggravate the situation.Just to put things in perspective,revenue per employee of private sector Tata Power Company at more than Rs1.5 crores is more than triple that of best performer of state owned Power companies. For worst performers like Punjab,Bihar and Himachal this figure is ranges from 15 to 25 times. This, simply, is not sustainable.

Finances of State owned PSEs

This excel sheet contains the last available summary financial data of each of the state owned PSE as reported by CAG of India. This is compiled are released in public intrest for wider awareness of the finances of State government owned enterprises and facilitating a cross country comparison.

Here are some interesting facts from this compilation:

• Andhra Pradesh has the highest turnover for companies owned by it at Rs 36k crores as also the highest number of employees at 2.6 lakhs.
• Gujarat has almost the same revenue as Andhra Pradesh at 33k crores but with less than half the number of employees at 1.15 lakhs.
• Maximum revenue per employee is by Gujarat but Profit per employee is highest for Orissa at Rs 3.4 lakh.Profit margin for Oriya PSE is highest at 17% probably driven mainly by Mining and its Power companies.Remember that Orissa was the first state to introduce Electricity reforms.
  
• Power companies have the highest turnover with TNEB(Tamilandu) at top with Revenues of 14.5k crores.Beverage (read liquor) sector comes 2nd led by Beverage corporations of Andhra Pradesh and Karnatka at 6.7k crore and 6.38 crore respectively. Civil supply or PDS sector comes third with Tamilnadu at 4k crores and Punjab at 3.5 crores.
• Among individual companies, maximum number of employees are employed by MSEB(Maharashtra) at 1.16 lakhs which is much higher than 77k employedby TNEB with similar revenues. Remember that distribution of power is privatised in its largest city, Mumbai.Tthe process for privatisng in some other cities is going on.
• PSEB(Punjab) is the highest loss making company with losses of 1.6k crores rupees.17 of the top 18 highest loss making companies are in Power sector with next 5 from Transport sector.
• Ironically, the top 3 profit making companies are also from Power sector with MPSEB(MP) at 1.2k crores at the top followed by ~Rs 570 crores Gridco(Orissa) and GSECL(Gujarat) ~Rs 500 crores
  
• In transport sector, most of the states are making huge losses relative to revenues and few are just breaking even not surprisingly since the total turnover of the transport sector is only Rs 16k crores. Regional integration of transport sector is urgently called for but this is unlikel to happen since Transport sector is one of the biggest employers employing about 4.7 lakh people.Considering the vital role of public transport and the number of citizens it touches directly, overhaul of the sector is urgently called for. If we assume an average ticke price per trip per person of Rs 20, an average Indian must be making at least 8 trips per year by state transport buses alone.

How can BJP prove it is better?

The BJP came up with a wonderful IT vision which was a result of the hard work of few professionals at the eleventh hour. They also issued an infrastructure vision and a manifesto which was much better than Congress.
In retrospect, very few people took these seriously including,perhaps, BJP leadership. If BJP seriously believed in any such visions it would have worked harder on it and started mobilising public opinion on these issues much earlier and not dumped them as soon as the election got over which seems to be the case at present.
When the BJP states that 85 paise out of 1 Rupee disappear due to corruption,it is blaming itself as well because its not widely recognised that almost all central government schemes are implemented with the active cooperation of state governments.
The judiciary, Police,Education,Health and power sector come under the preview of states as well.But state governments are not considered worthy of critique by most of the commentators and let off to easily.

• When it comes to disinvestment, why does not best chief minister of India Narendra Modi let go of his state PSUs so well endorsed by his colleague Arun Shourie?
  
• why do not BJP ruled state privatise or at least corporatise transport corporations taking a cue from Banglore Transport corporation?
  
• I guess Electricity and Transport utility are chief among the loss making enterprises.Why not privatise the state electiricty generation/transmission and distribution and take the process initiated by BJP to its logical conclusion?
  
• What prevents BJP ruled states from reining in absentee school teachers and doctors?
  
• Why cant other BJP ruled states take a cue from Gujarat and start evening courts to reduce backlog of cases?
  
• Can any of the BJP ruled states claim that their Police departments are entirely professional and free from political interfernce?The recent initative of Shivraj Singh chauhan of organising Jan Sunvai with Police officers is a good initiative.
  
• Are the borders of BJP ruled states free from rent seeking behavior by Inspectors, why cant they follow the example of Gujarat of computerising the weighing of trucks?
  
• The BJP led state governments can still follow up on the promise of digitisation of government documents promised in their IT vision.
  

There seems to be an impression that only government is central government and public intellectuals have a task at hand here.