Increasing Unemployment among Indian Dental Graduates - High Time to Control Dental Manpower.

Mushrooming of dental colleges in past few years in India has led to unemployment among Indian dentists. In 1966, the first dental college in the private sector was established. Before that, all the dental colleges in India were government-aided. Since then there has been marked an increase in number of dental colleges. Currently, there are 310 dental colleges in the country out of which 292 are privately owned and only 40 are run by the government.1 As a result, thousands of dentists are coming out every year with very low prospectus of job. In 1970, there were only 8000 dental students graduated from Indian Dental Institutions, the figure was 30,570 in year 2010.2

Main reason for this is unemployment is an imbalance in demand and supply of dental professionals. According to the WHO idol Dentist-population ratio is 7500. In 2004, Dentist-population ratio in India was 1:30,000. According to World Health Statistics – 2014, the ratio is 1:10,000.3 However, the ratio suggests that there are still not enough no. of dentists in India, but it is not the sole factor, there is one more factor which cannot be ignored is inequality in distribution of dentists. In rural areas, the dentist population ratio is very less as compared to urban areas. In year 2004, India had one dentist per 10,000 people in urban areas and one dentist per 2.5 lakh people in the rural areas.4

Very less number of posts are available for dentists in the government sector. Only 5% graduated dentists are working in the government sector.5 Self-practice in urban areas is not very easy due to saturation of the dental market. In rural areas, private clinics are not viable because of less awareness for oral health among the rural population. Dental graduates are facing serious financial constraint. News of suicidal attempts by dentists is also not rare now days. Unemployment not only psychologically affects the person but also promotes crime in society. Unemployed dentist are left with no choice but to leave their profession and work in call centers or commit suicide.

Following a suggestion may help in improving the present condition:

Increasing job opportunities in rural areas may be a helpful step in balancing the concentration of dentists in urban and rural areas.

Dental colleges who do not fulfill all requirements of Dental Council of India should be closed down.

Government should plan to create new posts for dental graduates in government hospitals and in Primary Health Centre.

Public health programs should be planned to provide dental health education to increase oral health awareness especially among the rural population.

If appropriate decisions are not made on time, it will negatively affect the integrity of dental profession, and highly trained dental manpower of the country will waste. Furthermore, less earning will further Detroit the quality of future dentists as good students will avoid to choose dentistry as a profession. Now, it is high time to control oversupply of dental manpower. If the present situation continues, there will be more than 1 lakh dentists oversupply by the year 2020.5 Despite being such an important issue the studies on this subject are lacking. Exact statistics will be helpful in proper planning of dental manpower.