Two of my younger relatives, my niece and nephew, recently cleared their NEET-PG. Last week, before the latest wave of controversy over percentile shifts and seat allotments hit the headlines, I asked them a simple question: In today’s high-stakes private healthcare market, why choose ENT or Obstetrics over “lifestyle” branches like Radiology or Dermatology?
My nephew, who picked ENT, and my niece, who chose OBGYN, didn’t hesitate. They wanted the “theatre.” They wanted the adrenaline of surgery and the tangibility of a branch where they could physically intervene to save a life. They weren’t dismissing Radiology because of the money, but they knew the paychecks in corporate diagnostic chains are massive.
They walked away because they felt the pulse of the future: Radiology felt increasingly shadowed by AI, and Dermatology felt too much like a cosmetic retail business. They chose the human touch over the digital screen. That conversation has stayed with me.
Every year, theMinistry finds itself stuck in the same loop with the “vacant seat” crisis. Their go-to strategy is almost always a blunt one, which is just lower the bar for eligibility. We saw this hit a bit of a breaking point in 2023, when the cut-off was slashed to a “zero” percentile just to get bodies into those empty slots. But trying to fix a deep-rooted workforce shortage by messing with exam scores is like lowering the height of a hurdle because the athletes don’t want to run the race in the first place. It ignores the fact that these young doctors aren’t failing to qualify—they are making a conscious, market-driven choice to stay away from certain paths.
Now look at this stark paradox. Whilethousands of MBBS graduates fight tooth-and-nail for surgical slots, official data from the Rural Health Statistics, Ministry and post-counselling reports from recent NEET-PG cycles show thousands of postgraduate medical seats remained vacant after multiple rounds of counselling. Especially, there was low uptake in non-clinical branches such as Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. According to some reports, in the 2024 counselling process alone, over 24,000 seats were listed as vacant in the third round, and in the 2025 cycle authorities noted around 18,000 PG seats were unfilled nationwide, prompting cut-off adjustments. The government treats this as an exam logistics problem, but it’s actually a failure of imagination in workforce planning.
Students are reading the room better than the policymakers are. Take the fear of AI, for instance. By 2024, the FDA had authorized nearly 900 AI/ML-enabled medical devices, with the vast majority (roughly ~700), concentrated in Radiology. Our students see this. They aren’t afraid that a robot will take their job tomorrow, but they are rightfully worried that AI will commoditize their expertise and shrink their market value. When the government fails to integrate AI into the formal curriculum or define the “human-in-the-loop” legal protections, students naturally pivot toward the “safety” of the operating table.
Furthermore, we have to look at the “Stitch in Time” we are missing in our rural and peripheral colleges. A PG seat in a remote district is often seen as a career dead-end because the infrastructure is crumbling. If a Tier-3 college lacks functional OTs, safe housing, or a consistent patient load, no amount of cut-off reduction will make that seat “treasure” to a bright young doctor. They would rather wait another year and try again for a center that offers real clinical autonomy.
We need to stop the fragmented approach where the NMC, the Ministry, and the various exam boards operate in silos. We need a National Health Workforce Planning Cell that doesn’t just count seats but projects needs for the next decade. If we want doctors in Anatomy or Public Health, we have to make those careers viable, through scholarships, guaranteed faculty positions, or pay parity that reflects their importance to the foundation of medicine.
To borrow the old idiom, a stitch in time saves nine. Making these structural shifts now, such as investing in rural infrastructure, clarifying the role of AI, and incentivizing the “unpopular” branches, will prevent a total systemic tear a decade from now.
My niece and nephew aren’t outliers; they are the market signal. They know where medicine is going. It’s time the government stopped looking at the spreadsheets of exam results. It should start listening to the people who are actually going to wear the stethoscopes. If we don’t mend the fabric of medical education today, the cost of the repair tomorrow will be more than we can afford.
Clear Cut Health Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: Jan 18, 2026 01 :00 IST
Written By: Paresh Kumar
