Undoing the undoing: On the Competency-Based Medical Education Curriculum guidelines
The withdrawal of the new curriculum by the NMC is welcome
Education lays the path for progress, but not everything that passes for education is a universal good. Immediate corrective measures are needed when it strays from its path, and the government’s decision to withdraw the Competency-Based Medical Education Curriculum guidelines published by the National Medical Commission (NMC) rich with blundering interpretations, jerks a retrograde move back within law, and reason. Published on August 31, the curriculum specified that sodomy and lesbianism were “unnatural sexual offences”, including them under the category ‘sexual offences’. It also slotted transvestism or cross-dressing under the category of sexual perversion. The mandatory seven hours of disability competencies that students earlier had to undergo were excluded from the foundation course too. In doing so, the NMC did not merely attempt to take medical students back centuries, but it did so in violation of at least a couple of laws of the land, and overlooked the guidelines it had set earlier. In mentioning sodomy, lesbianism and transvestism as offences/perversions, the NMC was in violation of the Transgenderpersons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. Notably, following admonition by the Madras and Kerala High Courts, the NMC, in October 2021, instructed all medical universities to not approve unscientific, derogatory and discriminatory information on the LGBTQIA+ community. With the removal of mandatory disability competencies from the foundation course, the NMC violated the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. It mandates the inclusion of the rights of persons with disabilities in the curriculum of universities, colleges and schools and further requires the integration of disability as a component in all educational courses for university teachers, doctors, nurses, and paramedical personnel. Again, it was the NMC that introduced the competencies in 2019, as a response to years of advocacy. The competencies would provide students a rights-based approach to removing barriers to health care, and ensuring equitable access to quality care.Naturally, transgender and disability rights groups protested vehemently against the revised curriculum. Incensed by this regressive move, that erased all the progress achieved in the curriculum after decades of advocacy, they said they would write to the World Federation for Medical Education to temporarily suspend the NMC’s recognition status if the errors were not immediately rectified. While the crisis is past for the moment, the incident has eroded the faith of the public, and marginalised groups, that the government always has their best interests at heart. Progress, particularly in changing perceptions and pre-conceived notions, is hard-won in incremental doses. For an arm of the government itself to undermine these small advances is a shameful act. The withdrawal is a matter of great relief.