Trained, Bond Signed, Nurses Wait For Jobs For Over 7 Years In Madhya Pradesh

NDTV

24-07-2025

Bhopal:
They were trained to treat patients. But today, the students of Indore's government MGM College are nursing wounds of betrayal -- inflicted not by disease, but by a system that abandoned them midway. These are young women who once carried stethoscopes now carry placards and infants, sitting on footpaths outside government offices. What began as a journey of service has now become a prolonged protest against silence. This is not just a demonstration. It is the scream of broken promises echoing across Madhya Pradesh.
Nursing graduates from the 2018 batch were promised government jobs. In return, they signed a bond: Serve wherever the state sends you, and if you refuse, pay a fine of Rs 2 lakh.
Seven years later, only nine of 130 have received placements. The rest -- 121 young professionals -- are stuck. The bond hasn't been withdrawn. The jobs haven't come. The silence has become suffocating.
Sunita Patel, one of the students, arrives every day at the protest site carrying her eight-month-old son. Her degree is now reduced to a burden.
"I was married on the promise that I'd soon have a government job," she said, tears welling up. "Now my husband questions me, my in-laws call the degree fake. Every morning, I bring my baby 30 kilometres from Pithampur, just to sit here and wait for a miracle."
In a cramped 10x10 rented room in Indore, Sakshi Gupta keeps formula notes pasted on her walls -- a fading symbol of hope.
"We studied in government hostels. Now we're paying rent, electricity, food bills from our families' pockets," she said. "We are not sitting idle. We have done everything they asked -- completed training, signed the bond, waited. Now we just want an answer. When will our job come? Will it ever come?"
For Aastha, a student from Sagar who now lives alone in Indore, the room she rents isn't just where she sleeps. It is her kitchen, her study, her world. Her father is no more. Her mother is surviving on little, and her younger brother carries the weight of her dreams in his school bag.
"I cook my food and swallow my disappointment with it," she said. "We were not asking for charity. We want what we were promised -- a dignified job in return for our service," she said.
These stories are not isolated. They are symptoms of a wider disease -- one that afflicts the healthcare system of Madhya Pradesh.
Ironically, while trained nurses sit unemployed, the state faces a dire shortage of medical staff -- be it nursing or doctors.
The World Health Organisation recommends one doctor per 1,000 people but Madhya Pradesh lags far behind with one doctor per 1,460 people. Nurses are short in supply, doctors even more so. Yet, students like Sunita, Sakshi, and Aastha remain on the streets, not in hospitals.
NDTV had previously exposed the large-scale irregularities in nursing education in what was labelled the "nursing scam". Between 2020 and 2025, not a single nursing graduate passed out from Madhya Pradesh, according to opposition claims in the Assembly.
This in a state where the Ayushman Bharat scheme alone is pushing thousands of patients to seek treatment outside state borders.
In 2018, just 399 patients were referred to hospitals in other states. By 2024, the number had skyrocketed to 35,327. Over Rs 1,085 crore has been spent on out-of-state treatments -- an amount that could have been invested in training, staffing, and retaining local health workers.
These students are qualified. They are ready. But instead of serving in hospitals, they are serving notices to a system that has stopped listening.
"We are making every possible effort to fill the vacancies. Where there are no sanctioned posts, it is difficult, but wherever there are, we will ensure recruitment," said Health Minister Rajendra Shukla.
But the ground reality tells a different story a story of delay, denial, and lost dignity.