Resources
Important for aspiring medicos:
Prepare yourselves to depend on your parents for financial needs for 12-15 years after entering MBBS
Parents who are planning to send their children for MBBS should be ready to not only fund their children's education, but also should have adequate funds to take care of their children's financial needs until they are well into their 30s.
This is not a "Breaking News" but a fact well known to National Medical Commission (NMC), various governements and the Supreme Court (SC).
70 percentage of medical colleges do not pay any stipend or are not paying the minimum set stipend to doctors who are doing MBBS internships.
The CJI remarked "This is like bonded labour. These are all students who have finished 4 years...what is NMC doing? They allow big colleges to take crores and these poor students who work at least 20 hrs a day, they're not paid at all."
The NMC has asked 4 weeks time to file a response. (Source: Padmakshi Sharma, Live Law, 16th October, 2023)
As per a recent survey conducted by NMC, most of the postgraduate students are either not receiving stipends or receving lesser than what has been recommended.
Analysis of 7901 responses received from PG students from 213 medical colleges (from 19 states and 2 Union Territories) revealed the following:
1. 2110 PG students were not receiving any stipend,
2. 4228 PG students were paid lower than what PG students received in govt medical colleges,
3. 1228 PG students said that their stipends were paid but were taken back (forcibly) by the college managements.
Kerala-based ophthalmologist and health activist Dr K V Babu sought to know from NMC, the names of medical colleges that took back stipend from 1228 PG students, under RTI act. However, the same information was denied by the NMC stating that "Third party information cannot be given under RTI act". (Source: Barsha, 29th September 2023, Medical Dialogues)
So, it is clear that being a medico, you are unlikely to be paid during internship or during PG. You could consider yourself lucky if you are among the minority of doctors who do get paid.
It is better to be mentally prepared to do social service for 7 years (1 yr intership, 3 years MD/MS and 3 years DM/MCh) after becoming a qualified doctor.