Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

It was early March. There we were, bleary-eyed and mildly irritated, straddling the invisible immigration control line at Delhi’s international airport, when I noticed something totally bizarre:

A long line of young students, some garlanded, curling around a smaller line of pet carriers. 

The pets looked as confused and frazzled as their owners, who’d been separated from other passengers in a strange way. It suddenly dawned on me that these were medical students on their way back from war-torn Ukraine. Sure enough, as we walked in step with them towards the exit, I saw them hive off and pool near placards that said “Tamil Nadu” or “Telangana”, where welcome committees were waiting to take their names down.

Their ordeal should have ended with the photo-ops of Operation Ganga.

Instead, these 18,000-odd students have spent the last four months unmoored and uncertain of where their medical career is headed. No college in India has space for them. The best their Ukrainian colleges can offer are patchy online classes. And the Indian government is yet to give any clear answers about making tweaks to India’s rigid university admission process.