Siddharth Kumar

I studied at a private university, BITS Pilani, in a remote part of rural Rajasthan. It can be considered an elite institution for technical education by Indian standards. Since private universities in India, which do not receive state aid, are not legally mandated to provide affirmative action (reservation) in their admissions process, BITS Pilani did not.

However, the pride the students at BITS took in being there on merit became nauseating after a certain point. Almost every BITSian had the firm delusion that they were better than others because they somehow got in through pure merit, since the university did not have any reservation policy.

What most of them did not bother to look at was the barrier to entry to the meritocratic process, the tuition fees. BITS was and is one of the most expensive ‘elite’ private universities in India. Naturally, most of the students were from upper-middle-class backgrounds, children of second-generation white-collar workers, government employees, or people considered to be in the top 5-7% of the economic and social pyramid. Not surprisingly, most of them were from upper-caste families, and some from ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBC), whose economic conditions were better.

One interesting aspect of this was that most of the students from OBC backgrounds would have secured admission to IIT (state-run technical universities considered the most premium, even than BITS) using the same reservation had they got in. Since they are in BITS, they also have to sing along to the tune of “merit” to fit in with the urban upper-class crowd.

“Merit” in India is a weapon used to defend an advantage while pretending to stand for fairness. The word carries moral authority, but the reality behind it is far less noble. In a caste society, merit is not a measure of talent but a story people tell to make inequality look deserved.

Merit is a quintessential 18th-century idea that became a tool for the propagation of the ‘capitalist vices’ after its father, John Adams, decided that a certain system was the best way to increase wealth. Then, a newly constituted nation-state across the pond made it part of its national identity.

The argument for merit starts with the basic assumption that there exists a level playing field, which India, or, for that matter, any society or nation, has almost never had. The world has always been feudal and aristocratic, and when the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity reached the masses, and they started asserting themselves, the neo-feudal descendants of the modern society suddenly thought of the ‘novel’ idea of using merit as a yardstick to gatekeep the masses away from access to resources, power and representation.

In India, for centuries, caste dictated who could read, who could learn, and who could even enter spaces of knowledge. This was enforced through strict social sanction, ostracisation, and more often than not, violence, which has taken extreme forms. Entire communities were systematically excluded from education, while others monopolised it. You cannot build generations of privilege on one side and generations of deprivation on the other, and then suddenly declare a fair competition because suddenly the post-capitalist world isn’t that fair for neo-feudal descendants as well.

Yet that is exactly what the language of merit does. It takes the end result and treats it as proof of individual worth. It ignores everything that came before it. The student with private schooling, English fluency, coaching classes, and a stable home is declared “more meritorious” than someone who studied in a crumbling government school while managing economic stress and social discrimination.

Studies on social mobility in India consistently show that caste advantage reproduces itself across generations. Opportunity is not randomly distributed; it is systematically inherited. Sociologists have long pointed out that what we call merit is deeply correlated with access to resources.

Michael Sandel’s critique of meritocracy cuts straight to the point: systems that claim to reward talent often end up legitimising inequality. The winners believe they deserve to win; the losers are told they deserve to lose. In a caste society, such narratives rewrite historical oppression as personal failure.

In India, reservations (affirmative action for jobs and education) are constantly attacked as an assault on merit. That argument only works if you believe the system was meritocratic to begin with. Elite institutions in India remain dominated by those who have had structural advantages for decades in forms of better schooling, better networks, and better preparation. But when they succeed, it is called merit. When someone from a marginalised background gets in through an affirmative push, they are deemed less deserving. Elite spaces, especially in technical education, actively construct this illusion.

There is also a convenient moral trick at play. Merit doesn’t just rank people but also judges them. Failure becomes proof of deficiency. Because once you believe that outcomes reflect merit, you stop questioning the system. The privileged get to keep their position without guilt, and the excluded are told to work harder, as if effort alone can erase structural barriers.

This is why the debate around merit in India is so dishonest. It is not really about excellence. It is about control over opportunity. Merit is invoked selectively, defended when it protects privilege, dismissed when it threatens it.

So no, merit is not some pure, objective standard that has been unfairly corrupted. It was never pure to begin with. It has always been shaped by power, by access, by history. In India, that history has a name, ‘caste’.

If anything, reservation does not weaken merit; it exposes how fragile and exclusionary the concept is. It forces the system to confront the fact that performance cannot be separated from context. That’s what we have been calling merit, more often than not, inherited advantage with a moral label slapped on top.

Merit, as a concept, should be questioned because, until you strip away the illusion, all you are left with is a system that rewards those who were already ahead and then calls it fair.