Healing the Rural-Urban Health Divide:
Despite the approval of 11,682 new MBBS seats and 8,967 postgraduate seats for 2025-26, India’s public health system continues to struggle with a critical shortage of doctors in rural areas due to flawed deployment policies and inadequate incentives.Despite a massive increase in PG seats since 2014, the vacancy rate for specialists in rural Community Health Centres (CHCs) stands at a staggering 79.9%, with a consistent shortfall of approximately 17,500 specialists.The situation is particularly bleak in large states such as Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu, which have a shortage of 94%, 80.9%, 74.4%, 80.3%, 88.1%, and 85.2%, respectively.While 20,649 new undergraduate and postgraduate (PG) seats have been approved, 27 of the 43 new colleges are in the private sector, which lacks obligations to serve the public health system or rural areas.
Operational Hurdles in CHCs: A functional CHC requires a team of 5 specialists (Physician, Surgeon, Obstetrician, Paediatrician, and Anaesthetist); however, current specialist numbers can fully operationalize only 882 out of 5,491 existing CHCs.While states continue to construct new CHCs to secure Central Government funds, many of these facilities function merely as Primary Health Centres (PHCs) due to the acute shortage of specialized manpower.Even 11 out of 18 AIIMS report nearly 40% vacancies in teaching and research faculty, threatening the quality of specialist training.The central health budget prioritizes infrastructure (buildings) over operational needs like drugs, diagnostics, ambulance services, and salaries. Also, there is a notable absence of a defined policy to link the increase in Postgraduate (PG) medical seats with the mandatory filling of specialist vacancies in public health institutions.
