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Journalism of Courage
Soon after Medical Council of India MCI chief Ketan Desai was arrested on charges of accepting a bribe,Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad shrugged off responsibility,saying that the MCI has a separate identity it is an autonomous statutory body with only eight of its 120 members Central government appointees. That is about to change. The health ministry is all set to pass an ordinance scrapping the MCI and vesting its powers in a body of seven physicians and health experts. The government will have no role,it seems. But replacing the MCI with government appointees leaves little doubt as to who will call the shots.
Self-regulatory professional bodies for doctors,engineers,lawyers and chartered accountants is the moving spirit behind the Advocates Act 1961,the Chartered Accountants Act 1949 and the Medical Council of India Act 1956 in other words,the belief that,say,doctors know best how to regulate other doctors. But a spate of scandals in these bodies has called this very model into question. The Bar Council of India acts too often as a lobby for errant lawyers,and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India was woefully slow in reacting to the accounting discrepancies in the Satyam scandal. The monopoly these bodies have over higher education in their professions also means that accreditation and recognition have become a sordid saga in which Ketan Desai is only the latest chapter. But will government control ensure more transparency? If the AICTE is any indication,the answer is no. The All India Council for Technical Education was established to oversee technical education. Unlike the MCI,its top functionaries are appointed by the Union government not unlike the arrangement envisaged in the ordinance that the health ministry has proposed. In July 2009,the AICTE top-brass was accused of corruption by the very same CBI that is now after Ketan Desai.
