Revisiting Merit in India
As I reflect on the notion of Merit, I am reminded of the oft-quoted phrase 'Sky’s the limit.'
The idea that any individual, irrespective of their social circumstances, can access the highest
rewards in society implies that welfare is purely a function of personal factors like effort and
hard work. In other words, rewards in a society, in the form of jobs, power, money, or
authority, are distributed on the basis of individual merit. This is taught in classrooms as a
fundamental principle of social mobility, where individual talent and effort determine one's
life outcomes or achievements. However, a closer examination provides a point of departure
from this idealised view and reveals a more complex reality.
This article undertakes a critical examination of the concept of merit and meritocracy,
challenging its purported “egalitarian” nature through an empirical analysis of the Indian
context. It begins by interrogating the fundamental assumptions underlying the notion of
merit which reveals the inherent flaws and limitations of this concept. Focusing specifically
on the Indian education system, it critically evaluates how merit is operationalised and
quantified through competitive examination scores and discusses the role of quotas in
addressing historical injustices.
The meaning of merit is complex, but its origins can be traced back to Michael Young, an
English sociologist, who coined the term in his dystopic essay, The Rise of the Meritocracy,
published in 1958. In his work, Young highlights, “For hundreds of years society has been a
battleground between two great principles – the principle of selection by family and the
principle of selection by merit”. This dichotomy highlights the longstanding tension between
ascriptive and achievement-based factors in determining social status and opportunities.
Merit and Social Stratification
Despite its ostensible commitment to egalitarianism, merit perpetuates a pernicious form of
social stratification, wherein putative merit serves as a proxy for entrenched privilege. First of
all, it presupposes equal access to opportunities for all individuals to realise their potential.
Opportunity covers a wide variety of factors such as educational opportunities, healthcare
access, access to information, access to social networks, opportunity to get a well-paying job
etc. In a system where privilege determines opportunity, a woman legal practitioner from a
lower-middle-class background and a man who is a second-generation lawyer do not have
equal access to opportunities. Likewise, India has millions of people whose opportunities are
restricted by inequities rooted in history and exacerbated by more recent well-intentioned
policies with adverse effects. When this system disproportionately rewards a selected few
based on seemingly arbitrary criteria, it becomes a self-perpetuating mechanism of social
reproduction, wherein those already endowed with privilege are disproportionately likely to
be deemed 'meritorious.'
Merit-based systems often devolve into stratified hierarchies over time. Michael Sandel in his
book, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? astutely observes that even
the inequality that results because of merit is not fair or justified, for it “ignores the moral
arbitrariness of talent and inflates the moral significance of effort.” Sandel's argument that
merit-based inequality is unjust is particularly relevant in the Indian context, where the notion
of it is often used to justify the concentration of power and privilege among certain groups.
For instance, empirical research has shown that the upper castes hold a monopoly in the
creamy layer of the Indian elite, particularly in the bureaucratic and economic spheres, and
that so-called merit-based selection corresponds largely to selection based on social
background. Merit thereby becomes exactly what it was supposed to prevent — a system for
the hereditary transfer of ascriptive social status and economic capital across generations.
One can argue that people accumulate wealth to pass down inheritance to their offspring, and
that is sufficient reason to justify people inheriting different amounts of wealth, as a
cumulation of the efforts of their ancestors. However, such disparities in inheritance would
only be considered justifiable if there had been a fair and equal starting point in history, with
all subsequent transactions and interactions occurring in a just and impartial manner. The
history of wealth acquisition is however a history of injustice.
Consequently, this phenomenon has led to a misguided belief that individual success is solely
the result of personal merit and hard work, disregarding the enabling role of social networks,
family background, and institutional support. This narrative can be damaging, as it implies
that individuals from disadvantaged sections of society are responsible for their own suffering
due to their inaction and inadequacy of effort. In India, this can be seen in the way
marginalised communities like Dalits, Tribals and Muslims are often blamed for their own
poverty and lack of progress. Concomitantly, the notion of merit provides a convenient
justification for privileged groups to attribute their social status and economic well-being
solely to their individual merit and hard work. This narrative is often reinforced by
showcasing exceptional individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds who achieve success.
For instance, the success of a few Dalit entrepreneurs like Bhimrao Gaikwad, who built a
business empire despite facing caste-based discrimination, is often cited as evidence of
meritocracy. However, this narrative overlooks the fact that many Dalits continue to face
significant barriers to accessing education, credit, and market opportunities. Similarly, the
achievements of women like Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, are often attributed to
her individual merit, ignoring the structural inequalities that prevent many women from
achieving similar success.
The Question of Privilege and Quotas: The Case of IITs
As sociologist Andre Beteille (2010) argues, "The idea of meritocracy is based on the
assumption that individuals are free to compete with one another on equal terms, but this
assumption is far from true in Indian society." In reality, social and economic inequalities are
deeply entrenched in Indian society, and meritocracy often serves to legitimise and perpetuate
these inequalities instead of erasing them. Meritocracy often perpetuates inequality by
privileging those who have already succeeded, thereby limiting social mobility.
To illustrate this, I take the case of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India’s elite tech
school. Meritocratic systems govern admissions such as those for premier institutions like the
IITs. As it has been pointed out already, meritocracy often perpetuates inequality by
privileging those who have already succeeded — you are more likely to get into an IIT if you
have resources in the first place. You are more likely to be one of those to attend an expensive
coaching school for preparation because of the cut-throat competition. Women accounted for
only 20 per cent of IIT students in the 2022–23 admission period. Parents typically don’t send
their girl child to coaching institutions primarily due to their remote locations, for example,
Kota, India’s coaching hub for entrance examinations. You are also more likely to be an
upper caste. In the book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India, Ajantha
Subramanian reveals how IITs perpetuate caste privilege under the guise of meritocracy. She
opines that “though at first glance, the terms caste and merit appear antithetical, the
institutional spaces most identified as meritocratic continue to be overwhelmingly upper caste
in composition”.
The implementation of quotas, a form of affirmative action intended to promote equity and
address historical injustices in educational institutions and jobs has been met with persistent
resistance and outrage from privileged caste groups, such as the Savarnas. These groups
perceive the allocation of reserved seats to individuals from disadvantaged sections, like the
Dalits and Tribals, as unfair and discriminatory, arguing that it undermines the principles of
“merit” and “efficiency” (Behera & Mathew, 2022). The concept of cultural capital, as
described by Bourdieu, sheds light on the dynamics of power and privilege in India's
affirmative action debate. Bourdieu (1986) notes concerning cultural capital, “Because the
social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more disguised than those of
economic capital, it is predisposed to function as symbolic capital, i.e. to be unrecognised as
capital and recognised as legitimate competence.” For students from marginalised
communities, affirmative actions have yielded paradoxical consequences. While different
cutoff scores aim to redress socioeconomic disparities and foster representation among other
factors, they inadvertently create opportunities for stigma and bias against students who
manage to access academic spaces like the IITs. Students report being asked about their rank
to infer their caste, and Dalit students are often cautioned by their families to conceal their
identity to avoid discrimination. Moreover, students are not the only victims, with professors
having previously resigned from IITs citing discrimination based on their caste. Despite the
government's reservation policies and the Supreme Court’s direction, multiple reports find
that Dalits and Tribals are not recruited in the faculty at the IITs, as 98 per cent of the IITs’
faculty belong to the upper caste.
The anti-reservation vanguardists attribute the disproportionately high dropout rate of
students from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Class
(OBC) backgrounds at elite state-funded institutions to individual deficiencies, such as
inadequate academic preparation or insufficient merit, but seldom would they acknowledge
the systemic barriers and structural inequalities that hinder their academic success. Dalit and
Tribal communities continue to face significant barriers to accessing quality school
education. According to the 2019-20 UDISE report, only 4.6% of SC students and 2.6% of
ST students attend private schools, compared to 18.4% of students from OBC and 34.6% of
students from General categories. Furthermore, the 2011 Census reveals that 47.1% of SC
children and 55.3% of ST children drop out of school before completing their secondary
education. Case studies document that schools serving disadvantaged caste communities are
poorly staffed, with teachers having inadequate subject knowledge and training. This
ultimately limits their representation in elite institutions like the IITs. It has already been
discussed above the kind of overt and covert discrimination that students from marginalised
backgrounds face upon their arrival at the IITs.
The making and unmaking of Merit
As Galanter (1984) notes, achieving merit necessitates access to three essential types of
resources: (a) Cultural resources (e.g., social connections, knowledge, and values) (b)
Material resources (e.g., prior education, financial support, technology, and infrastructure) (c)
Intrinsic ability and hard-work. Proponents of meritocracy often attribute inter-caste
disparities in merit solely to differences in intrinsic ability, implying that certain groups are
inherently less capable. This stance is problematic, as it perpetuates a flawed assumption that
an entire population dividend is less intrinsically able than others. Furthermore, the current
debate framework, characterised by binary oppositions between merit and incompetence, as
though we belong to a singular monolithic category, oversimplifies the complexities of the
issue.
The concept of merit has historically aligned with societal power structures, inadvertently
perpetuating privilege and “naturally” concentrating elite educational resources in the hands
of the already advantaged. This de facto monopoly, veiled by a facade of open competition, is
now facing challenges from various quarters of society. As the meritocratic model becomes
increasingly contested, it is essential to subject it to empirical scrutiny, and investigate its
workings and outcomes, acknowledging the complexity of its evaluation and the varied
contexts in which it operates.
References
Young, M. (1958). The rise of the meritocracy, 1870-2033: An essay on education and
equality. Thames & Hudson.
Sandel, M. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What’s become of the common good? Farrar, Straus
and Giroux.
Beteille, A. (2010). Democracy and its institutions. Oxford University Press.
Subramanian, A. (2019). The caste of merit: Engineering education in India. Harvard
University Press.
Behera, D. K., & Mathew, A. (2022). Caste, meritocracy, and inequality in Indian higher
education. Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and
research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). Greenwood.
Deshpande, S. (2006). Exclusive inequalities: Caste, merit and discrimination in Indian
higher education. Economic and Political Weekly.
Galanter, M. (1984). Competing equalities: Law and the backward classes in India.
University of California Press.
About the author: Hamiron Timung (he/him) is a second-year undergraduate student of
Sociology at Hindu College. He is interested in Inequalities, Stratification and Exclusion
Studies, and Indigenous/Tribal Studies.
Email: hamiron15@gmail.com
