How NEET has become a Rs 5700 crore business in Tamil Nadu? Justice AK Rajan report reveals!

For NEET, Tamil Nadu, the state which has more government medical colleges in India, is a ground of business and that it has been deep-rooted in the state by establishing a market under the guise of coaching the students to pursue medical admission. The monopolistic form of exam has been demanding to enter the medical college through its hard impasse and has successfully created a divide between the aspirants and discriminated against the underprivileged students. NEET had a skyrocketing market in Tamil Nadu as in five years, the national exam has become a Rs 5700 crore business. 

The Himalayan growth of NEET in Tamil Nadu was revealed by the committee headed by retired judge Justice AK Rajan. The committee was formed by the Tamil Nadu government to study the impact done by the NEET on the rural students in the state. The committee had submitted its report to the government in July this year and wasn't made public. AK Rajan said that most of the opinions collected by the committee were against the NEET and recommended the state government enact a law to repeal the national exam in Tamil Nadu. 

The committee's 165-page report was made public on Monday, two months after its submission to the government, and the development has come days after the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a bill to scrap the NEET in the state. In the report, Justice AK Rajan's committee has revealed that the NEET has become a Rs 5750 crore business in Tamil Nadu and the dreadful business was made possible by the unprecedented surge of hundreds of coaching centres, which charge an exorbitant fee from the students to get coaching and to clear the NEET exam for securing a medical admission. 

The committee has noted that the rise of coaching centres had helped the students with good financial stability. However, the medical aspirants from an underprivileged background were left in the lurch and pushed to forgo their medical dreams as they can't be able to get coaching for a CBSE-based examination. The AK Rajan committee has further revealed that over 400 NEET coaching centres were born in Tamil Nadu and the total business of these coaching centres in the state is approximately Rs 5750 crore. The committee has also studied the fee structures of the major coaching centres in Tamil Nadu for various coaching formats. 

It has underlined that these 400 coaching centres had charged more fees from the aspirants and the range of one-month crash course fee is between Rs 10,000 to 38,000 in these centres. The fee would be between Rs 30,000 to Rs 1,50,000 for one year and for four years, it would be between Rs 2,50,000 to Rs 4,50,000. The committee has said that the average cost of coaching a student is Rs 95,033 and by charging such amounts, a coaching centre on average makes Rs 13.95 crore annually. 

The committee said, "This trend shows the financial muscle power of the affluent segment that succeeded in getting medical seats after the invention of NEET." The committee has also graphed a comparison between the annual incomes of the parents of NEET aspirants and the fee structures of coaching centres, the committee has revealed that 95% of the Tamil Nadu State Board of Secondary Education (TNSBE) students cannot afford to go for NEET coaching in wake of the exorbitant fees. The report has also brought to light that there had been a dramatic decrease in the admissions of state board students to MBBS while the admissions of CBSE students have increased in the last five years (2016-2020). 

The report has said that the percentage of the TNBSE students applying for admission in MBBS fell down by approximately 30%, but the admission of the CBSE students had increased by 31%. The report had drawn to the conclusion that the NEET-era has disadvantaged state board students and deprived their dreams of becoming a doctor. Besides harming the students financially, the NEET has also been unfolding a distressing substance of drawing a divide between the students based on their privilege and economical status. The committee has said that the percentage of students from rural areas securing MBBS admissions had declined as compared to numbers before the NEET was implemented. 

The report has found out that the NEET business had given no space for the students from rural areas. The committee has revealed that 99 per cent of students, who had appeared for NEET in 2019-2020, had received coaching before the exam and most of them had appeared for the exams multiple times to secure a medical admission. In Tamil Nadu, most of the students are put into the NEET coaching from the 8th standard onwards, mentally preparing the students to concentrate on the NEET exam without giving much importance to the actual learning in their studies. 

According to the committee, the percentage of repeaters who have secured a medical admission in MBBS in 2020-21 stood at 71.42%  and the same percentage stood at 12.47% in 2016-2017. These repeaters hadn't enrolled for higher education after class 12 and they had attended repeated coaching for NEET and this trend continued till they crack the examination. Coming down hard on the NEET and its implementation, the AK Rajan committee has noted that this fashion of repeated attempts had highlighted that medical education has gone into the hands of upper communities of the society who are capable of investing more, while the doors of the coaching centres are being shut to the students from rural and backward communities. 

The report further said that the private colleges that charge up to Rs 30 lakh fees a year were exercising a dismaying culture in which the students, from an affluent background, with average scores, were given medical admissions and it has sparked a fashion where the financially stabled students have been becoming doctors. By concluding that NEET is of no use, the committee has recommended the total elimination of the national exam in Tamil Nadu and it has pressed that its time for the state to reform education from 'coaching' to 'learning'. 

 

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