The plight of dental surgeons in Jammu and Kashmir is a grim reminder of how policy neglect can cripple both professional careers and public health outcomes. The numbers alone are staggering-of the roughly 6,000 registered dental surgeons in the Union Territory, about 5,500 remain unemployed. Even more alarming is the fact that no significant recruitment has taken place since 2008, leaving an entire generation of dental professionals sidelined. In a region where terrain, distance, and infrastructure already pose severe challenges to healthcare access, oral health is often the most neglected dimension. Yet, oral hygiene is directly linked to systemic diseases, making dental care a critical public health need, not a cosmetic luxury. Strangely, while the Government is expanding tertiary care through seven new medical colleges and upgrading hospitals, there is no parallel push to strengthen dental services. The argument that private practice could fill the gap is hollow. Dentistry is not a simple OPD service; it requires expensive infrastructure-equipment, sterilisation facilities, and prosthetics labs-that most unemployed graduates cannot afford. Setting up a clinic is a financial gamble they cannot take without institutional support. Meanwhile, rural and semi-urban populations continue to suffer from untreated dental conditions that can escalate into serious medical emergencies.
This long freeze on recruitment also erodes professional competence. Surgical and procedural skills in dentistry, as in other medical fields, demand continuous practice. Over nearly 17 years without Government hiring, thousands of trained dentists have been forced into unrelated jobs, migrated elsewhere, or abandoned their profession entirely. The loss is not just personal-it is a waste of public investment in training and a slow-motion collapse of an essential healthcare segment. It is baffling why dentistry remains excluded from the “mandatory services” mindset that governs other medical disciplines. When cataract surgeries, maternal care, and vaccination drives are planned and executed as routine public health imperatives, why is oral health left to chance? The lack of a transparent, annual recruitment mechanism-similar to what exists for other doctors-makes the situation untenable. For a Government committed to improving healthcare equity, recruiting dentists regularly should be a standard policy by default.
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