“Name the bones of the foot in sequence.” Multiple hands shoot into the air. They belong to a batch of young girls and boys, twinning in their white lab coats.
One among them is picked on to answer the question. As Zavi Paphino rattles off the names of the bones, his confidence is unmistakable. The professor’s nod signals he has got the answer right.
This thrills Zavi, a first-year MBBS student and . He recalls the day he secured admission into the Nagaland Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (NIMSR) in Kohima, Nagaland. It felt like the moment had been a lifetime in the making.
When Zavi first dreamt of becoming a doctor, he resigned himself to the fact that he would — like numerous other Nagaland youth — have to move out of his home state to pursue his medical studies. The competition is fierce. Before the NIMSR was instated, the youth of Nagaland would hustle to secure admission to one of the 63 seats reserved for them in medical colleges across India.
These included 21 in the Northeastern states of Manipur, Meghalaya, and Tripura. Studying in their home state was not an option. You see for 61 years since attaining statehood in 1963 — the state was a part of Assam following Independence — Nagaland did not have .
In 2023 the National Medical Commission approved NIMSR to take in its first batch of 100 MBBS students for its inaugural academic session 2023-24. The youth of the Northeastern state saw this decision as a lifeline to their dreams. One of the b.