by Bhukya Kanishka 28 June 2021
- Introduction
Meritocracy is the rule of the meritorious. However, in this article, meritocracy refers to the process of differentiating people based on their talents and abilities, rather than a particular kind of government. The exponents of merit say that the idea behind meritocracy is to promote free competition and then leave it to the individual to find his place in society according to his inherent talent and abilities. Meritocracy is based on two principles – Firstly, scarce resources should be strictly distributed based on merit. Secondly, everyone must have the same opportunity to advance his or her abilities.
Michael Young conceived the term ‘meritocracy’ in his seminal work called ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’ where he had held that intelligence + effort together make up merit. Although the book was initially perceived as a critique on meritocracy, political theorists soon started looking at it positively. Political theorists such as Plato, J.S. Mill, Voltaire, Daniel Bell, etc. gave numerous reasons supporting meritocracy. Plato staunchly believed that meritocracy was the only form of government, ensuring each person his due share. Whereas, J.S. Mill took a slightly milder stance by proposing ‘scholocracy’, where the educated citizenry got more votes. J.S. Mill justifies this in his book ‘Considerations on Representative Government’. He believed that the legislative institutions of democracy would be abused by the ‘uncultivated’. Moreover, he had also said that the enlightened few would better look after the interests of society.
Let us now move on to examine the concept of merit in the Indian higher education context and demonstrate why merit cannot be the basis of justice.
- Merit in Indian Higher Education
The dichotomy between merit and affirmative action (reservation) has always been a fiercely debated issue in India. The anti-reservationists camp has been claiming that reservation is against the concept of merit and produces outcomes that one does not deserve. In this context, the article will now demonstrate how the anti-reservationists have been using merit as a façade to deny equal opportunities to the historically disadvantaged castes.
For admission to most educational institutes in India, a competitive exam is conducted to judge the candidate’s merit. For example, CLAT is conducted for admission to NLSIU. In CLAT, merit refers to the rank obtained by the candidate. The cut-off rank decides whether a candidate is meritorious or not. Suppose NLSIU offers 90 unreserved seats, then anti-reservationists will claim that these 90 candidates have secured these ranks due to their own inherent talents and abilities. These 90 will be termed as meritorious and deserving, and the reserved candidates will be termed as undeserving. This is highly contentious. Thus, let us now explore the flaws in the concept of meritocracy.
It cannot be said that all 90 unreserved students have secured their ranks only due to their innate talents and abilities. Their result depends on many other things such as their social, cultural and economic resources, luck, etc. CLAT is an exam that demands high English proficiency. The imposition of English precludes many dalits in rural areas from pursuing education in NLSIU. A farmer’s son belonging to a dalit community might not have the necessary resources to access English-medium schools. Whereas a candidate belonging to an upper caste community, due to his or her hereditary and environmental factors, will be well exposed to an English-speaking environment and have the necessary resources to take exclusive tutorials for CLAT.
The problem with meritocracy is that it violates the entire premise on which it is built, i.e. Equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity is a political theory in which people can compete fairly on a level playing field. However, meritocracy conveniently ignores existing systematic inequalities, and the edge accrued by children belonging to privileged families. Meritocracy is an inter-generational relay race where every individual has a different starting point.[i] While the individual’s inherent ability and hard work do play a role, evidence suggests that one’s economic and social capital have a massive impact on their achievement. Meritocracy is unfair because it privileges those winners of the ‘natural lottery’ over those who are not endowed with fortunate social circumstances and talents.[ii] If merit were the sole basis of one’s success, one would wonder why the vastest amount of meritocratic talent is found in individuals belonging to upper castes. Hence, it can be concluded that the most crucial factor in where people end up depends on where they started from in the first place.
Another problem with meritocracy is that it assumes that people are autonomous initiators of their own conduct.[iii] However, from the above example, it is clear that one’s achievements are a product of various other factors such as social, economic and cultural resources, and environmental and hereditary circumstances. Now it becomes difficult to ascertain or quantify the extent to which an individual is responsible for their actions, and therefore, deserving of reward.[iv] Moreover, it is also susceptible to the fact that luck plays a significant role in one’s success. For example, CLAT examination rules say that the tie-breaking procedure will be as follows in case of a tie.
- Higher marks in Legal Aptitude section
- Higher age
- Computerised draw of lots
In CLAT 2020, the cut-off mark for NLSIU was 92.75, and 8 people scored the same number of marks. It is highly plausible that a few candidates got into NLSIU, only because they were born a few hours/days/months earlier than the others or because of a draw of lots. Other students who lost out because of the three tie-breaking mechanisms cannot be called non-meritorious or undeserving. They were equally deserving, but due to the circumstances entirely out of their control, they would be termed non-meritorious. Moreover, it is also evident that meritocracy does not reward efforts. It only rewards achievements. This implies that meritocracy only rewards actual achievements but not ability or merit.[v]
Conclusion
Thus, there are many loopholes and inconsistencies in the concept of meritocracy. There are various sorts of inequalities prevailing in the society and a common yardstick cannot be used for their enhancement.[vi] For the concept of merit to hold water, the state must reduce the initial inequalities and provide a level playing field to each citizen of the country. The state needs to nationalise health and education sector and impose high taxes to reduce inequalities and ensure equality of opportunity. Simultaneously, the state must also take affirmative action to ensure that the individuals belonging to communities at the bottom of the social ladder are at the same position as the ones at the top of it. Therefore, merit cannot be the basis of justice.
[i] Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller Jr, The Meritocracy Myth (3rd edn, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. c2014).
[ii] John Rawls, A theory of Justice (Harvard University Press 1971) 64
[iii] Maureen Ramsay, What’s wrong with Liberalism: A Radical Critique of Liberal Political Philosophy (Bloomsbury Academic 2004).
[iv] ibid
[v] ibid
[vi] Valerian Rodrigues, The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar (Oxford University Press 2002) 40.