India, Nov. 26 -- When Sachin Kamble (name changed), a 19-year-old medical aspirant from Repanpalli, a remote village in Gadchiroli district in eastern Maharashtra, failed to secure admission in a government medical college in early November, he was dejected.

"Since I come from a poor, Scheduled Caste (SC) household, I would have got a full fee waiver had I secured admission in a government college," Kamble told Hindustan Times. "But my score in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) was slightly lower than the cut-off, which forced me to consider private colleges."

Kamble's family was too poor to afford the steep fees charged by private medical colleges near big cities like Nagpur, Mumbai and Pune. So he zeroed in on the Sin...