Congratulations, you’ve cleared NEET! Now go ahead and deposit your entire life’s earnings. Open a non-alcoholic champagne and celebrate, because the National Medical Commission (NMC) has just dropped the most exciting news: India now has 1,36,939 MBBS seats across 823 medical colleges, setting a new record. Throw confetti, because it’s being claimed that we’re solving the country’s doctor shortage. However, if you carefully read the fine print, a deeply dark truth emerges. Of the 9,911 new seats added this year, only a modest 2,111 seats have gone to government colleges, while 7,800 seats have been allocated to private medical institutions. For the first time in Indian history, 54% of the country’s MBBS seats are with private colleges—proving that India is not pursuing academic expansion, but rather running a model designed for massive profits.

If you’ve ever dreamed of wearing a white coat, the free market has fantastic news for you: you no longer need an impossible 99.9 percentile in NEET. You just need a family willing to sell ancestral property, liquidate mutual funds, and take loans against your cousin’s house. At an average of ₹1 crore per degree from private colleges, these 7,800 new private seats alone will pour roughly ₹7,800 crore to ₹11,700 crore into the pockets of private college trusts from a single new batch. Once all five batches are running simultaneously, these private medical trusts will have such guaranteed cash flow that even large corporations will cry with envy. Who knew that treating the sick would be such a wildly profitable deal for college managements?

If you’re wondering how private colleges bypass fee ceilings and reservation quotas set by state governments, look at the game being played in Tamil Nadu. Many private colleges have obtained Deemed University status, cleverly escaping the ambit of state counselling and fee regulations. The moment an institute becomes “Deemed,” it comes under central counselling where market-rate tuition fees apply—and the total cost of education jumps straight from the state’s regulated quota fees to ₹90 lakh–₹1.45 crore. By exploiting procedural loopholes like the 60-day Auto-NOC rule, these colleges print hundreds of crores in unregulated revenue on one hand, while the state’s reservation quota vanishes into thin air on the other—an unmatched example of regulatory gymnastics.

Well, let’s assume you’ve somehow managed to study for five to five-and-a-half years, blown your parents’ entire retirement savings, and obtained your MBBS degree. You might think it’s time to start earning big, but hold on. India produces about 1,37,000 MBBS graduates every year, but only 75,000 to 80,000 postgraduate (PG) seats are available against them. This creates a terrifying crisis in which more than 40% of doctors are left hanging. According to the Economic Survey, the starting salary of a general (unspecialized) MBBS doctor is equal to that of a fresh B.Com graduate—around ₹5 lakh per year. This forces you to pursue PG (specialization) at any cost. Now your options are extremely simple: burn more money for two years in a coaching centre to crack NEET-PG. Pay another ₹1 crore to ₹2 crore for a private PG seat. Or accept a ₹45,000-per-month job in a big-city hospital while your bank loan EMI sits comfortably at ₹60,000. Mathematically, if you spend ₹1.5 crore to earn ₹5 lakh a year, the payback period alone will take you 30 years. That means you’ll recover your money exactly when your retirement party is underway.

Our society still treats medical students as if a convoy of luxury cars is guaranteed for them. But the Economic Survey has thoroughly shattered this illusion. According to the report, doctors are no longer entering this profession for guaranteed wealth; they are paying a “prestige tax” for social status. Instead of the expected starting salary of ₹20 lakh per year, new graduates are forced to work for ₹5 lakh annually. During internship they slog through 36-hour shifts for a meagre ₹7,000 a month, and struggle with the bitter reality of paying interest on their MBBS loans well into old age. This system hasn’t broken; it is working exactly as it was designed—a smoothly running machine whose job is to convert the dreams of the middle class into institutional real estate and lifelong debt.

To all the young aspirants grinding 14 hours a day in coaching hubs, just this much: keep studying, the white coat will look great on you… just make sure you carefully read its financial terms before wearing it.