One of the key reasons for the poor health services in rural India is lack of doctors. As Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad lamented the other day, doctors are just not willing to serve in rural areas, no matter how lucrative the incentives are or how tough the penalties. Attempts to make compulsory rural posting have also failed because the doctors now have a wider choice with mushrooming private sector healthcare facilities and demands for doctors abroad.

So, doesn't it make sense to devise a different medical course altogether which is tailor-made to attract rural youth who will have to necessarily serve in rural areas? So what if this course is shortened to keep surgery out? So what if there are two sets of doctors at district, block or panchayat levels (assuming that some MBBS doctors would opt for such postings)? So long as the government ensures that these qualified doctors provide healthcare services in rural areas nothing else should matter. Or should it?