By A solution-first roadmap to expand medical education capacity, retain Indian talent, and build healthcare as a national economic engine.
India has no shortage of talented young people who aspire to become doctors. Every year, lakhs of students dedicate years to preparing for medical entrance examinations, driven by a desire to serve society and build meaningful careers. Yet only a fraction secure admission to medical colleges.
The challenge, therefore, is not a lack of aspiration but a lack of capacity.
Having spent decades building hospitals and contributing to medical education, I have come to see that healthcare capacity and medical education capacity cannot be viewed separately. They are two sides of the same ecosystem. Hospitals need skilled professionals, while professionals need hospitals in which to learn, train, and gain clinical experience. The healthcare system, in turn, requires a continuous pipeline of people equipped to serve an evolving population.
If India wants a stronger healthcare system tomorrow, it must expand the capacity to educate healthcare professionals today.
Educate in India. Serve India.
India needs to embrace a simple national principle: create enough high-quality, affordable opportunities for Indian students to study, train, and build their careers within the country.
The imbalance between demand for medical education in India and the availability of seats creates intense competition, financial pressure on families and inequalities in access. For many capable students, it also means exploring opportunities overseas. This is no longer merely an education issue; it is a healthcare, economic and national-capacity issue.
India has invested heavily in highways, airports, digital networks and other infrastructure that enable economic growth. Medical education must be treated with the same strategic importance because the doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals we educate today will form the human infrastructure on which tomorrow’s healthcare system depends.x
The Seat Shortage Is a Healthcare Challenge
A shortage of medical seats in India triggers a chain reaction. Students spend years preparing for highly competitive entrance examinations, often relying on expensive coaching, while private medical education can remain out of reach for many families. Opportunities also remain unevenly distributed across states.
India has, however, made significant progress in expanding medical education capacity.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as informed by the National Medical Commission (NMC), MBBS seats in India increased from 1,09,115 in Academic Year 2023–24 to 1,28,976 in Academic Year 2025–26. Over the same period, postgraduate medical seats increased from 31,185 to 86,360. These figures were stated in a written reply in the Lok Sabha and published by the Press Information Bureau on July 24, 2026. Official PIB source — Medical Seats, July 24, 2026
This expansion is significant. It demonstrates that medical education capacity can be increased when policy, regulation and institutional investment move in the same direction.
The Government has also continued to expand medical education infrastructure through the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for establishment of new medical colleges attached to existing district and referral hospitals. As of March 2026, 157 medical colleges had been approved in three phases, with a total approved cost of ₹41,332.41 crore. The Government also reported that 43 new medical colleges had been established for the 2025–26 academic year. Official PIB source — Update on Medical Education, March 10, 2026
This progress is important, but the next question is whether capacity can continue to expand at the scale and speed required by India’s future healthcare needs.
The consequences extend well beyond individual students. Healthcare requirements are increasing as the population grows, life expectancy rises, and the burden of chronic diseases expands. At the same time, shortages and uneven distribution of qualified healthcare professionals remain particularly significant across rural, remote and underserved regions.
From my experience across healthcare and education, the connection is clear: we cannot sustainably expand healthcare delivery without expanding the pipeline that produces healthcare professionals.
The question, therefore, is not simply how many students we admit today. It is whether we are creating enough trained professionals to meet India’s healthcare requirements over the next decade and beyond.
Making India the First Choice
For many Indian students, studying medicine overseas is not necessarily the first choice. It can instead be a response to a mismatch between aspiration and domestic capacity.
The issue is not that overseas medical education is inherently inadequate. Students study successfully in many countries and institutions. The larger question is why capable Indian students should have to leave the country simply because sufficient high-quality and affordable opportunities are not available at home.
Differences in clinical exposure, disease profiles, healthcare delivery systems and regulatory environments can also create challenges when graduates return to practise in India. The stronger solution is not to discourage students from going abroad. It is to ensure that studying in India becomes a genuine choice rather than a constraint.
If India creates sufficient, affordable and high-quality medical education opportunities, we can retain more talent within the country, strengthen the domestic healthcare workforce and reduce the pressure on families to seek alternatives overseas.
What is often described as brain drain is, in part, a consequence of capacity constraints. When opportunities are limited, talent looks elsewhere. Our objective should be to create enough opportunities here for that talent to study here, train here, serve here and build here.
Healthcare: A National Service and an Economic Engine
Healthcare should not be viewed solely as a welfare responsibility. It is also a major economic sector, an employment generator and a source of innovation, research and investment.
According to the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), India’s healthcare sector was valued at US$372 billion in 2023 and was projected to reach US$638 billion by 2025. The latter is an IBEF projection and should not be interpreted as a current 2026 valuation. IBEF — Healthcare Industry in India
IBEF also reports that India’s healthcare workforce exceeded six million as of CY2024, with more than 6.3 million additional jobs expected by CY2030. These are IBEF estimates and projections rather than an official government headcount or a guaranteed number of future jobs. IBEF — Indian Healthcare Industry Analysis
The broader point is clear: healthcare in India represents a significant and expanding economic opportunity. From my perspective, healthcare must be recognised not only as a social necessity but also as a strategic economic sector. It can create high-quality employment, attract investment, encourage innovation, support research and strengthen India’s global competitiveness.
The opportunity extends beyond treating patients. A larger healthcare ecosystem can support medical value travel, international students, research partnerships, healthcare technology, diagnostics, medical devices and new models of healthcare delivery. India can meet its domestic requirements and, over time, become a trusted global source of healthcare and knowledge. But that ambition begins with education.
The Reboot India Needs: Create Capacity, Not Just Reform
India has made significant progress in expanding medical education in India, but the next phase requires a different mindset. We must distinguish between reforming the existing system and creating new capacity at scale.
Regulatory reform, accreditation and quality improvement are essential. However, reforming existing institutions alone will not solve a structural capacity challenge. India needs new capacity through models that are faster, scalable and closely connected to healthcare delivery.
This is where established hospitals, distributed medical education models and hub-and-spoke systems can play a transformative role.
The objective should not be to lower standards, but to remove avoidable barriers to creating high-quality capacity while making quality and outcomes non-negotiable.
Immediate: Unlock Existing Capacity
The fastest opportunity lies in using the strengths India already possesses.
Medical colleges with adequate faculty, patient volumes and infrastructure should be encouraged to expand MBBS and postgraduate capacity through carefully monitored, time-bound programmes.
A larger opportunity lies within India’s existing hospital infrastructure. Across the country, established hospitals already possess many of the ingredients required for effective clinical education, including:
- Experienced clinicians
- Multidisciplinary departments
- Advanced diagnostics
- Operating theatres
- Intensive-care facilities
- Emergency services
- High patient volumes
- Established systems of clinical governance
This creates a powerful proposition: qualified hospitals with the requisite infrastructure, clinical volume, academic leadership and governance should be able to participate in creating medical education capacity within a rigorous regulatory framework.
This is not about creating a shortcut around regulation. It is about recognising that appropriate existing healthcare infrastructure can potentially be leveraged to create educational capacity faster than building every institution entirely from the ground up.
India already has a policy precedent for this approach. The Centrally Sponsored Scheme for establishing new medical colleges attached to existing district and referral hospitals was specifically designed to use existing healthcare infrastructure as the foundation for expanding medical education infrastructure. Government of India — Centrally Sponsored Scheme for New Medical Colleges
The proposition should therefore be broader and more outcome-oriented. Where an existing hospital genuinely meets the required standards, its clinical infrastructure and patient ecosystem can become part of a credible medical education ecosystem.
At the same time, a large hospital is not automatically a medical college. The ability to educate doctors requires much more than beds and equipment. Institutions must meet prescribed academic, faculty, clinical, infrastructure and regulatory requirements.
The National Medical Commission’s regulatory framework provides requirements relating to the establishment and assessment of medical institutions, minimum standards for undergraduate and postgraduate education, and maintenance of standards in medical education. The current NMC framework includes the Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023; Minimum Standard Requirements for Undergraduate Courses; Post-Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023; Minimum Standard Requirements for Post-Graduate Courses; and the Establishment of Medical Institutions, Assessment & Rating Regulations, 2023. National Medical Commission — Rules & Regulations
The focus should therefore be on measurable outcomes, including:
- Faculty quality
- Student-teacher ratios
- Clinical exposure
- Patient diversity
- Academic performance
- Ethics
- Research
- Graduate competencies
The principle should be simple: expand capacity without compromising quality.
Training must also extend beyond classrooms. Internship and residency programmes should emphasise hands-on clinical exposure, simulation-based learning, emergency medicine,
multidisciplinary care and competency-based assessment so that graduates are genuinely practice-ready.
At the same time, capacity expansion must extend beyond doctors. India needs more nurses, paramedics, laboratory professionals, physiotherapists, radiology technicians and other allied healthcare professionals. A strong healthcare system is built by a multidisciplinary workforce.
Medium Term: Build Scalable Medical Education Models
The medium-term objective should be to strengthen the shift from an infrastructure-heavy approach towards a more outcome-based model of accreditation.
Institutional quality should be assessed not simply by the physical infrastructure an institution possesses, but by what students actually learn and how effectively graduates are prepared for clinical practice. Faculty excellence, clinical exposure, patient diversity, graduate competencies, research output and academic outcomes should therefore become central measures of quality.
The NMC’s medical education regulations already provide for scrutiny and assessment of institutions against prescribed standards. The opportunity now is to make these frameworks more responsive to different models of delivering high-quality medical education while keeping academic and clinical standards non-negotiable. National Medical Commission — Rules & Regulations
Public-private partnerships can expand capacity significantly. Government and district hospitals often have substantial patient volumes and serve populations that private institutions may not reach, while private institutions can bring clinical expertise, technology, management capacity and operational efficiency. Well-designed partnerships can combine these strengths while retaining public accountability and academic standards.
India should also explore distributed-campus and hub-and-spoke models. A central academic institution can work with multiple appropriately accredited hospitals across a region, allowing students to experience different specialties, patient populations and healthcare environments without requiring every institution to duplicate every expensive facility.
Such models could be particularly valuable in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, helping create regional healthcare and education ecosystems rather than concentrating capacity in a few metropolitan centres.
The regulatory architecture should evolve alongside these models so that greater flexibility in delivery never becomes a dilution of academic or clinical standards.
Long Term: Build a Healthcare Workforce for India and the World
The long-term goal should be much larger than simply increasing the number of medical seats in India. India should aspire to a future where no deserving student has to leave the country simply because a high-quality medical education opportunity is unavailable at home.
Retaining talent, however, requires more than education. India must offer healthcare professionals meaningful careers through better working environments, modern hospitals, continuous professional development, research opportunities, transparent career pathways and access to advanced technology.
The objective is to create an ecosystem in which people can study in India, practise in India, innovate in India and build their careers in India.
Once domestic requirements are adequately addressed, India can confidently expand its role as a global destination for medical education through international students, academic collaborations, research partnerships and global certifications.
The sequence matters: first, build capacity at home; then strengthen the ability of that workforce to serve India; and, once domestic capacity is strong, enable India to serve the world.
The Way Forward
India’s medical education challenge is fundamentally a capacity challenge. The answer is not to lower standards, but to create more opportunities while making quality non-negotiable.
We need more teaching hospitals, more medical colleges in India, more affordable seats and a stronger pipeline of doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals. We also need to rethink how that capacity is created.
From my experience across healthcare and education, I believe hospitals and medical colleges should not be viewed as separate institutions. They are interconnected parts of the same ecosystem. Hospitals need professionals, professionals need training, and training needs clinical environments.
Those clinical environments already exist across India’s extensive hospital network. The opportunity is to connect these pieces more intelligently.
India does not need to choose between access and excellence. It needs a model that expands access while protecting excellence. Medical education should therefore be treated as national infrastructure, not simply as an academic sector.
When we build a medical college, we are not merely creating seats; we are creating doctors. When we create a larger, well-trained healthcare workforce in India, we strengthen hospitals
and expand healthcare capacity. When we build a healthier, better-skilled population, we strengthen the productive capacity of the entire economy.
As India moves towards becoming a developed economy, healthcare and education cannot be viewed merely as sectors to be managed. They are essential national infrastructure, foundational to India’s human capital, productivity and long-term economic future.
If every capable student has the opportunity to study here, train here, serve here and build here, we will not simply produce more doctors. We will build a stronger healthcare system, retain Indian talent, create high-quality employment and strengthen one of the most important foundations of India’s journey towards a developed nation.
The future of India’s healthcare system will be determined not only by how many hospitals we build, but by how many professionals we can educate, empower and retain.
That is the real blueprint for transforming aspiration into access and access into national capacity.
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