M.D Community medicine has limited scope in India as it is a branch usally choosen by mid to lower rankers as per the counselling trends. I would be lying if I say otherwise.
Basically as a resident, your work involves going to the health centres attached to your hospital/ college in the morning hours that is 9am-1pm. There you must cater to the general OPD, hold immunisation sessions on certain days of the week, manage interns, look after the drug demand of the centre, manage administrative work ie registers, consumable and non-consumable items, bio-medical waste management etc. There will be already an MO (medical officer) working in that health centre as a permanent staff who basically has the same work as you do.
Then, after lunch break (1–2pm), from 2pm onwards, you can have seminars (frequency varies from college to college), academic activities, or any other kind of work that the department gives you until 4pm. After 4pm you are free and there is absolutely no night duties.
As per NMC guidelines, you must also undergo residential training for a period of 3 months in a rural health centre which is usually a district or a sub-district hospital attached to your college. Even here you will be involved in administrative work only.
It Is 95% an administrative branch with very little primary level patient care involved. Mostly students choose this branch as a compromise mainly because they were unable to secure a good rank in NEET-Pg for whatsoever reason, or because they want a chilled life with relaxed work timings, or have some other backup career option like becoming a state M.O, Civil services etc and just want a M.D degree in front of their names or just want stipend money. Only about 5% take up this branch out of pure interest.
There is no super-speciality after M.D PSM.
After getting your M.D degree:
One can pursue SRship, where again vacancies are limited. Most of the vacancies nowadays are of purely ad-hoc in nature and permanent ones are rare. Number of publications and research articles does have a greater impact in interviews. Good luck finding a job if you are of general category!!
Field work opportunities with some organisation, NGO’s, health programmes. Salary will be lower for a fresher in field work jobs compared to the SRship along with lots of travelling being involved and comparatively more work and longer working hours. Though, for people for took the branch out of their interest would really enjoy this kind of job profile.
After 3 years of mandatory SRship in Delhi you can go for becoming a professor. But in Delhi, recruitment for permanent posts of professors is through a professional exam conducted by UPSC. In other states, duration of SRship needed to become a professor varies and can be just 1 year also. Recruitment for temporary posts of professor will be just like a normal interviews held by that particular college in both Delhi and other states. There is lot of corruption involved in recruitment as you can read in news online.
Many people switch to some kind of permanent jobs like M.O, UPSC CMS, ESIC, Medical superintendent, write PLAB or USMLE etc.
You can go for PhD.
There is no scope of opening your private practice and even if you do so, you will be involved in basic primary health care services and treatment of basic health conditions as 3 years of residency does not give you any special knowledge more than you had as a plain MBBS in treating patients.
You must face competition from M.D hospital administration, Aayush doctors, M.D family medicine, Masters of public health (MPH), BSc in biostatistics and epidemiology. These avenues are nothing but breakups of parts of M.D community medicine.
My Sr on the very 1st day of my joining told me that this branch should be taken only if you are genuinely interested in this branch or have some kind of backup in your mind.
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