The medical profession must urgently act on caste-based discrimination and harassment in their midst

Abuse and bullying during medical residency are common experiences of most doctors in India, but do not seem to have invited any major corrective action from the leaders of the medical profession. This kind of abuse is also on many occasions fuelled by prevalent misconceptions around caste hierarchies and the supposed non-deserving nature of students who enter the profession using reservations. The professional leadership has similarly turned a blind eye to the dominance of such damaging ideas and myths on college and hospital campuses, which in unfortunate instances have led to agonising mental torture and deaths by suicide of harassed students. The medical profession needs to collectively act on workplace abuse as well as casteist harassment before it is too late.