Non Practising Allowance - Bane of Indian Health System

Indian health services are being either provided by government hospitals (public hospitals) or by the hospitals run by the private sector. In the last 20 years we have seen that there has been massive proliferation in private health services available in the country. Same has been the trend in the medical education sector. Almost 50% of the all the existing medical colleges have come up in the last decade or so. It is presumed that no new government medical college has opened during the same period. Private health services have become popular and wherever possible, an Indian patient prefers to get his/her treatment done in the private sector. This trend has been observed over the last decade or two.
The question to be addressed by people at helm is why has this happened! Health is a state subject, not much funding available for government hospitals, apathy of the politicians and bureaucrats, corruption in purchases of medical equipment and drugs, lack of maintenance and biomedical engineering departments in the hospitals, poor facilities, dirty wards, unhygienic facilities and many more reasons can be attributed to this malady. However, in my opinion, it is introduction of Non Practicing Allowance or what is popularly called NPA is the root cause of this problem.
NPA was introduced in the late 60s to stop government employed doctors from doing private practice within the boundaries of a government hospital. Before its introduction, doctors were allowed private practice in special OPDs in evenings, thus helping them augment their incomes as well providing more income to the government. As time passed, the low total remuneration of a doctor started having affects on maintenance of academic standards for doctors. Continuing medical education in the form of books, journals, attending workshops and conferences is a part and parcel of a doctors life. However to do this cost money. Unable to support these activates with the nominal pays received by doctors and medical teachers resulted in some of these to resort to private practice on the sly. With time this became a norm, thus taking the doctors away from government hospital work. That resulted in a major loss of human resource availability for these hospitals. Non availability of these doctors resulted in lacunae in hospital administration as well fall in clinical standards of delivery of medicine. This also resulted in standards of the attached medical colleges to fall below the acceptable levels.
While this was happening, private sector started proliferating and thus big salaries were offered to senior doctors of various government medical colleges and hospitals. Thus started a migration, which has never stopped. Time to look into this aspect and make government jobs lucrative to stop this brain drain. Once this migration stops, there is hope. Time for the new MCI to look into these aspects.