Apparently, we are supposed to celebrate.
Peerzada Masarat Shah
There are no fireworks in the sky, but social media timelines in Jammu & Kashmir suggest a great triumph has been achieved. A medical college has been shut down. MBBS seats have been cancelled. Students are being displaced. And somehow, this is being packaged as a moral and administrative victory.
One is compelled to ask: what exactly are we celebrating?
The closure of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence is not the shutdown of an illegal operation or a fly-by-night coaching centre. It was a government-backed medical institution in the Jammu division, projected as a cornerstone of future healthcare infrastructure. It was meant to address a chronic shortage of doctors, medical seats, and tertiary healthcare facilities in Jammu & Kashmir—a region that already lags behind national averages in doctor-to-patient ratios.
Today, that institution stands stripped of its MBBS permission.
And the applause continues.
We are repeatedly told to think “beyond emotions.” Fair enough. Let us do exactly that. Let us think beyond slogans, communal narratives, and political chest-thumping. Let us examine the issue from the only lens that truly matters: public interest.
Fifty MBBS seats have been cancelled. Not deferred. Not suspended pending correction. Cancelled outright. That means fifty fewer doctors in the pipeline—not just for Jammu, but for Jammu & Kashmir as a whole. In a region where patients routinely travel hundreds of kilometres for specialised care, this is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a long-term public health setback.
This is not a religious statistic. It is a healthcare reality.
Yet the discourse quickly shifted away from regulatory failure and infrastructure gaps to something far more convenient: identity. The debate ceased to be about faculty shortages, clinical material, or inspection lapses. It became about who occupied the seats. The outrage was selective. The concern was not about standards, but about surnames.
Let us state this clearly, without euphemism or hesitation: medical seats were cancelled—not “Muslim seats.”
The National Medical Commission does not inspect faith. It inspects facilities. A cadaver shortage does not become acceptable because the student belongs to one community and unacceptable because they belong to another. A missing professor does not materialise through ideological alignment. Regulatory compliance does not bend to political sentiment.
Quality, inconveniently, remains stubbornly secular.
The irony is striking. Those who claim to champion “quality over quantity” are now celebrating the elimination of quantity without any visible improvement in quality. The college is shut. The deficiencies remain unresolved. No new institution has emerged. No alternative capacity has been created. The system remains broken—only smaller.
But yes, someone feels victorious.
We are told not to worry. Students, we are assured, will be “adjusted” in other medical colleges as supernumerary seats. It sounds comforting, almost benevolent. In reality, it is bureaucratic language for managed strain. Medical colleges across Jammu & Kashmir are already stretched. Faculty members are overburdened. Clinical exposure is limited. Infrastructure is finite. Adding students without proportionate expansion does not solve a problem—it redistributes it.
And then there is the silence on accountability.
Who approved the medical college in the first place?
Who conducted the earlier inspections that allowed admissions?
Who certified compliance year after year?
Who failed to intervene in time to prevent this collapse?
These questions are conspicuously absent from celebratory conversations. It is easier to blame students than systems. Safer to target communities than administrators. Convenient outrage thrives where institutional scrutiny is avoided.
Medical education is not a communal trophy. It is not a political scoreboard. In Jammu & Kashmir—where healthcare access is already shaped by geography, conflict, and underinvestment—it is a strategic necessity. Turning regulatory failure into ideological theatre guarantees only one outcome: a weaker, poorer, and more politicised healthcare future.
And let us not pretend this is an isolated episode. Over the years, Jammu & Kashmir has witnessed repeated cycles of grand announcements followed by quiet institutional decay. Colleges are announced with fanfare, but oversight is lax. Infrastructure is promised, but timelines slip. Accountability dissolves somewhere between Delhi, Srinagar, and Jammu.
The closure of this medical college is not a victory for standards. It is evidence of administrative failure at multiple levels—failure that is now being reframed as success.
So yes, celebrate if you must.
Celebrate that a medical college in Jammu has closed.
Celebrate that fifty MBBS seats are gone.
Celebrate that students have been displaced and futures rerouted.
But do not call it progress. Do not call it reform. And do not insult public intelligence by pretending this is about quality alone.
Because when the noise fades and the applause dies down, one fact will remain stubbornly intact: Jammu & Kashmir lost an institution, and gained nothing in return.
That is not victory.
That is self-inflicted damage—neatly wrapped in applause.
