MEDICINE- Doctors in the Dock

December 27. 1975 MEDICINE Doctors in the Dock The medical profession in the country is very much a part of the market economy network, its gaping income disparities and its private-profit motivations. Because of the affluence it assures, a large number of the more successful and ambitious students try to enter the medical profession. Some pay anything between Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000 for admission to a medical college. Thereafter, as they pursue their profession over some five and a hall years, they become increasingly conscious of their potential status in society. Their teachers are drawn from among the more distinguished practitioners in the city, whose life-style is often lavish. The term-end parties at the teachers' well-appointed homes fitted with many tokens of affluence give the doctors in the making their ideas of what to aim at. During their stay in the medical college such ambitions are reinforced again and again: