The impact of NEET on Tamil medium and rural students – A.K.Rajan Report !
The Tamil Nadu government has appointed a team under retired judge A.K.Rajan to submit a report on the impact of NEET, and the team has submitted a 165 paged report in July which is now open for the public.
The report has listed several reasons such as excluding 12th scores, encouraging private coaching centres, reducing chances for tribal, Tamil medium and rural students against NEET.
The number of Tamil medium students who joined MBBS before the academic year 2016-17 was 537 and it got reduced to 56 post NEET in 2017-18. In the academic year 2020-21, 217 students were joined through the 7.5% reservation provided for the government school students, and 82 Tamil medium students were joined through the rest of the 92.5% general category, which sums up to 299 students. More than 500 students were enrolled earlier and now it is just nearing half of it even after the reservation.
When the state board and central board categories are compared, 3544 state board students have joined in the academic year 2016-17 before NEET, which got reduced to 2303 post NEET in 2017-18 and 2762 in 2019-20. When the count of CBSE students joined before and after NEET is checked, a drastic change of increase from double-digit to thousands can be clearly seen.
The state board students joined in the government medical colleges in 2016-17 is 65.66% which got reduced to 43.13% post NEET in 2020-21. At the same time, the CBSE count has increased from 0.39% to 26.83%.
The report shows that the number of Tamil medium students joining MBBS has reduced post NEET. The Tamil medium students who joined the government medical colleges in 2016-17 is 12.14% which got reduced to 1.7% in 2020-21. The English medium students who joined both the government and private medical colleges before NEET is 84.12% and Tamil medium students is 14.88%. This has drastically changed after NEET, bringing up the English medium students enrollment to 98.01% and reducing Tamil medium students enrollment to 1.99% in 2020-21.
Similarly, the rural students who joined the government medical college before NEET in 2016-17 is 65.17% which has now reduced to 49.91%. At the same time, the urban students enrollment has increased from 34.83% to 50.09%.
The report also says that the first generation of MBBS graduates has reduced after introducing NEET in Tamil Nadu. The percentage of students who joined government medical colleges has reduced from 18.26% in 2016-17 to 10.46% in 2020-21.
When the students admitted to MBBS whose parents annual income is less than 2.5 lakhs is checked, it has reduced from 47.42% from 2016-17 to 41.05% in 2020-21. It can also be seen that the percentage has reduced to 30.64% from 47.42% soon after the introduction of NEET in 2017-18.
Before NEET, the admission of first-timers to MBBS was 87.53% where the remaining 12.47% were repeaters. But in 2020-21, the first-timers seem to be 28.58% and the remaining 71.42% are repeaters. This shows that only those who try again and again can get admitted to MBBS post NEET.
The report says that students spend approximate Rs.1 lakh to 4.5 lakhs on NEET coaching classes.
As per the report, the state doctors percentage distribution of super speciality seats of the TN state colleges has been drastically reduced.
The state’s health structure will be worsened if NEET continues, and the situation of Tamil Nadu would move back to before independence stage. And hence, A.K.Rajan and his team have requested to get the approval of the bill passed to get exemption from NEET from the President in the report.
Links :
Report of the High Level Committee
