In our country everyone is bullish on merit. Every time there is move to reserve seats in our so called “institutes of excellence” for those who have been mercilessly exploited for centuries by the forward castes, the media makes a big noise about how our “merit-based” system will collapse under the weight of reservations.   But what exactly is this merit and what has it achieved in the last sixty years? Okay it is difficult to define merit, fine; but let us find out who the meritorious ones in our society are and what have they achieved in the last sixty years.

Let us start with the most meritorious of our meritwalas – the IAS, our so called “steel frame” that served us well under the Brits, but cracked up and went to seed soon after independence. These meritwallas were supposed to give us a responsive, efficient and clean administration, instead all we have got is sloth, inefficiency and corruption at all levels in the administration. If we are in a total mess today, much of the credit for it should go to our merit based bureaucracy. So what merit are you talking about?

Let us next consider the IIMs our much touted world class B-schools. I have little knowledge about the history of these institutes, but I think it would be reasonable to believe that these institutes were certainly not set up to mass produce high net worth individuals. That, unfortunately, is exactly what these institutes seem to be doing to the exclusion of more meaningful and socially relevant objectives. The visionaries who founded these institutes would have probably believed that the institutes would produce graduates who would be willing to take up the challenges of building the economy of a newly emergent nation and work for decent salaries. As it is these institutes have turned out be nothing more than booking counters for the corporate gravy train. The obscene salaries that the graduates of these institutes command is not a reflection on the caliber of the graduates, it is more an indication of the fat of the land. The institutes which were supposed to produce graduates who would contribute to bring about all round economic and social development of the country are turning out graduates more at home playing the stock markets for MNC finance companies. You would say that there is more to the IIMs than the graduates, there is the world class faculty that conducts research on national economic and other issues and thus contributes a lot to the national effort. Well, zilch. Consider the fact that Lalu Prasad’s creative accounting of the railway account books bore the seal of approval of IIMA and you will probably understand what passes for merit in yeh mera India.

Let us next turn to the mother of all holy cows- the IITs. In the last sixty years, the world has seen tremendous growth of technology in all fields electronics, IT, electrical engineering, chemical, communications, transportation and so on. If the IITs have any notable contribution in any of these fields it must be the world’s most well guarded secret. Take software for example,- we crow so much about our skills in this area, but how many Operating Systems or applications do our gurus from the IITs have to their credit? Zilch. Compare that with the fact that Napster was designed by a school boy, and so was Linux. For all the merit will these guys be able to program a computer to beat a club level chess player?  What earth shaking inventions have rolled out of the IITs in the last fifty years the IITs have been around? Now consider the fact that the first thing that the graduates of these institutes do is chuck up whatever field they chose in the institute and pursue such “soft skills” like well finance, HR, in fact, anything other than engineering and technology. The graduates of these institutes would be the last to work on project sites, shop floor or the research lab. So what good are these institutes of technology that cannot even instill a basic love for technology in the students? Worse still, the managements of these institutes have set up their own captive institutes of management. Don’t the worthies on the management boards understand that their mandate is to produce engineers and technologists, not HR and finance professionals. Don’t these guys understand that turning an engineer into a management type is like turning a brain surgeon into a hospital administrator? Don’t these worthies understand that it is far more important to produce engineers and technologists that actually create wealth than administrators and management types that only re-distribute the wealth?  

Now let us see what real merit is all about. Let us talk cricket. Undoubtedly the most meritorious cricketer we have is Sachin, that is because Sachin delivers, not because he passed out of St. Xavier’s or some such fancy college or institute. Now consider a what if scenario. What if Sachin had graduated from a glamorous institute for cricket having the best facilities, the best faculty and all that blah, but he could never score anything in the tests or ODCs would you still say he has merit. No because in the final analysis, merit is what merit does. It applies everywhere but, unfortunately few fields of human endeavor are quite as transparent as cricket. In cricket the whole world comes to know whether you scored a duck or scored a ton; in business, administration, etc. you can go about fooling your fellow Indians about your merit, no one will challenge you if you graduate from the gravy train institutes. So basically all that noise has nothing to do with real merit – it has everything to do with elitism masquerading as merit.

The less said about other organs of our meritocratic system like our judiciary, our media our academia, our industry, etc. the better.

So don’t you think it is time to give ‘unmerit’ a chance?

Finally how come all that concern for merit vanishes into thin air the moment the next incumbent from the ruling Nehru-Gandhi clan announces that he is not interested in entering politics, becoming PM etc. but only interested in serving the poor? We seem to be pretty cool about the by now all too familiar reservation to the highest executive office in the country, the one reservation that we should be really concerned about. Or is it our so called merit that instinctively reaches out for the Nehru- Gandhi clan merit?