BANGALORE: A group of parents sitting in a city medical college auditorium, facing a management team, appear to be attending an orientation session. A closer look reveals they are bidding for post-graduate medical seats. A parent stands up and announces he is ready to pay Rs 1 crore for an MD (radiology) seat. Another parent ups the bid by Rs 25 lakh. At the end of the two-hour session, the coveted seat goes to the ward of the highest bidder.So highly contested have been the auctions for PG medical seats this year that the going rate for an MD (radiology) seat touched Rs 4 crore at a prominent Chennai college. It hovered between Rs 3 crore and Rs 3.5 crore for the same course in Bangalore colleges.Successful bids for orthopaedics and dermatology seats varied between Rs 1 crore and Rs 1.5 crore. A paediatrics seat cost Rs 1.6 crore.Parents find the auction disturbing. “It’s like buying property. The more money you have, the better your house is.”A source says: "It seems only the elite can pursue some courses. What is also shocking is that students are a witness to this trend. So the student whose parent could not pay those extra lakhs is scarred for life."Reasons for the high demand are not far to seek. For the lakhs of students who aspire to specialize in radiology, there are only 683 seats every year. "The gap between demand and supply is enormous. The shortage is perpetuated so that the cost of seats rises every year'' officials told TOI.College managements, on their part, say their repeated pleas to the Medical Council of India (MCI) to increase the number of seats have been in vain. "If we admit very few students for some courses, the cost of their training goes up. How do we make up for that?" asks the principal of a college where PG-seat rates this year hovered between Rs 1 crore and Rs 3.5 crore. The huge gap in the number of under-graduate and post-graduate medical seats makes medical education costlier every year.Apart from law and order, education and health are perhaps the two areas where a government has the greatest responsibility towards its citizens – in socialist as well as capitalist societies. Unfortunately, in India, we have seen the steady retreat of government as a provider of quality education and healthcare. It is clear that there is no option but for the private sector to step in to bridge the yawning gap in the number of schools, colleges and hospitals. The private sector — barring a handful of philanthropically-minded business groups and businessmen — will do so only if there is a return on investment. But the Supreme Court has, in an old judgment, specified that the “object of setting up an educational institution is by definition ‘charitable’…and should not be to make a profit.”While the objective of providing a sterling education that is affordable and widely accessible is laudable, the reality on the ground is very different. What has compounded the situation is the farce of trusts and societies setting up “not-for-profit” medical and engineering colleges when everyone knows that they exist only for profit. Huge capitation fees, running into crores, have to be paid unofficially for admission to these colleges. In several states in India, a large number of these colleges — often of dodgy quality — are run by powerful politicians or their pals. Worse still, government policies on education are designed to protect and promote these businesses-masquerading as-charitable institutions. Kapil Sibal’s legislative move as HRD minister to allow “foreign education providers” to enter India are said to have been scuttled by these “education barons”, many of whom are top ministers in state governments. They feared that reputed institutions from countries such as the US and the UK would undercut their money-making ventures.The problem with so many of our government policies — many of them handed down through the decades — is that they are hypocritical, antiquated and serve, either wittingly or otherwise, the vested interests of a few rather than the public good of the many. It is time to end this charade and allow the private sector to enter education with the stated, transparent objective of earning a profit. Where these colleges are set up without any substantial government subsidy, they should have the freedom to set fees as they deem fit. Let market forces determine how much students and their parents are willing to pay for a given quality of education (there is no compulsion to go to an “expensive college”, especially if it’s “not worth it”). If need be, the SC should be approached for a review.