Even though the Dental Council of India (DCI) sought a bridge course for dentists to become doctors citing oversupply of dentists as far back as 2017, the council has made no move to shut down a single dental college even though several private colleges were found to be substandard according to a CAG audit report. Out of 313 dental colleges, 263 are private ones accounting for over 88% of the 26,600 plus dental seats.News about hundreds of dental seats going vacant in private colleges hit the headlines as far back as 2012. Yet, the DCI permitted the opening of 15 more private colleges accounting for 1,450 seats. Even after the council announced in 2016 that no new colleges will be given permission, it allowed the opening of three more private ones, one in 2016 and two in 2017, including one in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, which already had a private dental college with 100 seats. Andhra Pradesh already had 13 private dental colleges accounting for 1,250 seats. Similarly, the only college opened in 2016 was in Nashik in Maharashtra with 100 seats though the district already had a dental college. Maharashtra already had 32 private dental colleges accounting for over 3,000 seats.Neither the health ministry nor the council have made any move to rationalize the number of dentists being produced despite admitting that there is an oversupply and despite overwhelming evidence of the existence of substandard private dental colleges. Interestingly, while many substandard medical colleges without adequate infrastructure or patient load were shut down, the same educational trusts continue to run dental colleges without any hindrance. Private dental colleges charge anything between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh per year for Indian students and Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh for NRI students. Many, however, slashed their fees when hundreds of seats remained vacant in recent years.There are just over 6,000 post graduate seats for almost 27,000 dental graduates. With little or no avenues for employment, the salary of dental graduates can be as low as Rs 10,000 per month in some states or at best about Rs 30,000 after several years of practice. “Dentists with flourishing practice are usually those who inherit a practice or have the means to set up private practice, as a dental clinic is a capital intensive proposition, starting with the most basic requirement, the dental chair, which alone could cost a couple of lakhs,” pointed out a dentist. According to several dentists TOI spoke to, the government hardly ever recruits dentists though it talks about poor access to dental services. Droves of dentists have left the profession, are unemployed or have gone abroad to the US, UK, Australia , Canada and the Middle East.