Siddharth Kumar

Meritocracy is a convenient way of covering up the scarcity problem. India as a country runs on a scarcity of resources. Any ecosystem with scarce resources requires that the population compete for a limited piece of the pie.

When the grasslands are not abundant enough, the deer that dies of starvation doesn’t die due to lack of merit. It dies due to lack of grass.

A system that by design has a limited intake and is guaranteed to exclude almost ninety per cent of the applicants is by no means meritorious but only an exclusionary scheme.

It serves those with better access to monetary resources and social capital to term this entire grand scheme of scarcity as a competitive endeavour. It allows them to put the blame and point fingers at those who are placed worse than them in the echelons of caste hierarchy and turn it into a question of competition and merit. It helps to avoid asking the uncomfortable question of why there is scarcity as it involves holding rulers accountable and demanding answers from them.

All this is harder than blaming Dalits and Backward Classes for eating the limited pie despite being non-deserving of it. Some deer should die instead of searching for better pastures.