The Myth of Meritocracy
Does ‘merit’ even exist, or is it just socially constructed and privileged?
Have you heard a topper say things like "It was all because of my hard work and the countless hours I put in” ? Or people admiring someone as a ‘completely self-made’ success story who ‘never took help from anyone’? Maybe you have come across the millionaire’s son who took a small loan of a million dollars and went on to make it big only to later write an autobiography proudly claiming he was self-made and succeeded without any real help!
In this essay, I want to explore a fundamental question: Does merit or the system we call meritocracy actually exist in the real world? As a society, we have built a super-powerful narrative around the idea of the ‘self-made’ person and we often glorify such stories. I have personally bought into this narrative at times, like many others (and still do sometimes). But here, I am attempting to question and unpack that belief to challenge the concept of meritocracy itself and offer my perspective on why it may be more myth than reality…and maybe I will get a lot smack for it :p
Definition
The term meritocracy was coined in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young not as praise but as satire. In his dystopian essay The Rise of the Meritocracy, Young warned against a future where success would be attributed solely to individual talent and hard work ignoring structural advantages and inherited privilege. Ironically the very concept he intended as a critique has now become a widely accepted ideal.
Most people today believe that those who succeed do so entirely on the basis of their merit. We glorify such individuals and place undue emphasis on personal effort often ignoring the social, economic and cultural systems that quietly shape those outcomes.
Desconstructing the idea
Let us dive a little deeper. The idea of being self-made or succeeding on merit only makes sense if everyone starts from the same place if there is truly a level playing field. But if the game is rigged from the start what is the point of competing? To make it more intuitive think about Squid Game: all participants begin with the same rules and conditions. In theory, anyone can win (watching it and hence the eg XD)
But real life especially in a country like India is far from this fictional fairness. We live in one of the most unequal societies in the world. And while economic inequality exists everywhere, here social factors often matter even more than money. Caste, religion, gender, language and region all shape a person’s starting point. Social mobility is limited. I have personally met people who openly say they can’t accept a lower-caste person being their boss.
They blame affirmative action for this being completely blind to their own inherited advantages. And they say this without shame.
Why do so many billionaire kids end up at legacy institutions the Harvards, Oxfords, or even India’s elite private schools and institutions? Why do they always seem to have the best grooming, the best networks and the most polished resumes? Why is it that almost always an upper-caste student is the one topping competitive exams or cracking prestigious programs? Yes economic status matters but in a country where access to opportunity is not the same as equal opportunity money alone doesn’t explain everything
Affirmative action has tried to level the field but elite institutions have found subtle ways to reproduce privilege. There is often an unspoken and inherent bias against those from marginalized backgrounds especially Dalits, Adivasis and backward classes whom these institutions don’t feel comfortable engaging with. It is a soft exclusion wrapped in the language of 'culture fit', 'polish', and 'merit'.
And no, these are not just rhetorical jabs. The data backs this up:
According to the Oxfam India report (2023), Dalits and Adivasis make up only 3-4% of faculty positions in elite institutions like IITs and IIMs.
A 2021 study by Satish Deshpande found that 90% of Indian media and academic leadership positions were held by upper castes.
In 2022, Ashoka University came under scrutiny for having zero faculty members from Scheduled Castes despite claiming to promote diversity.
Even in government services, where reservations apply, upper-caste dominance persists at higher levels: over 70% of IAS officers come from just 20% of the social population.
These numbers tell a story a story of how merit is defined by those who already sit at the top
The Convenient Pseudoscience of Privilege
Despite all the data being publicly available some people still have the audacity to throw around arguments based on so-called IQ literature. I am not exaggerating these comments are not limited to fringe corners; I have seen them openly expressed on public platforms including my own X feed. The idea being pushed is that there is something inherently lacking in the downtrodden that after 70+ years of affirmative action, the lower castes have been given enough.
What is conveniently ignored in this narrative is over 2,000 years of systematic oppression, exclusion and dehumanization inflicted by upper castes on marginalized communities. The history of caste is erased while the discomfort of a privileged student missing out on one seat becomes headline material. Affirmative action is painted as the villain while the real source of inequality ~ structural advantage is never addressed.
Indian Context
Let us talk about the Indian context. Many urban Indians today believe that caste no longer exists at least, not in any real or visible way. Legal safeguards have made overt caste-based discrimination riskier, yes. But to say the problem is gone would be deeply misleading. The intensity may have reduced in certain spaces but not the existence of the problem itself.
In fact, the modern notion of merit often functions as a new form of Brahminism one that comes with better public relations and a softer vocabulary. Who gets to claim this merit? Who can afford coaching classes, attend English-medium schools and devote years to competitive exams without the pressure of earning a living? The answer is usually the metropolitan savarna child armed with generational capital, linguistic fluency and the comfort of social legitimacy.
Now contrast that with a Dalit student from a village who faces not only financial hurdles but active social ostracization for daring to access the same educational or institutional spaces.
As Suraj Yengde writes, “Merit is not measured by potential, but by privilege.”
Satish Deshpande calls this the phenomenon of castelessness as caste privilege where upper castes insist caste is irrelevant only after they've benefited from it.
Anand Teltumbde has repeatedly argued that the Indian education system, far from being neutral, continues to be a mechanism for caste reproduction under the guise of merit.
So, when we glorify merit without context, we are often just giving a respectable name to deeply entrenched inequality
Global Context
If meritocracy were real we would expect equal access to top institutions. But the data tells a different story globally. In the United States, a 2023 study by Harvard researchers found that students from the top 1% of income earners are 77 times more likely to be admitted to Ivy League schools than those from the bottom 20%. Much of this is due to legacy admissions, which give preference to children of alumni—essentially formalizing hereditary privilege in elite education.
The UK shows similar trends. Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) draws a disproportionate number of students from private schools, which represent only about 7% of the population but account for over 40% of Oxbridge admissions. Class-based inequality, often racialized and regionalized, persists under the garb of 'academic excellence.'
Across these systems, the pattern is clear~ those who are already ahead in the race are handed better shoes, a smoother track and then praised for "running faster."
It’s Not Just About Money
And yet, despite such glaring disparities, the myth of meritocracy persists. Why? Because it serves those who benefit most from it. Some might argue that this data simply reflects economic inequality not social exclusion. But that is only partially true.
Minority and excluded communities exist in almost every country racial segregation in the U.S., class stratification in the U.K., ethnic hierarchies in parts of Europe and Asia. The social divisions may differ in form but the pattern is familiar~ marginalized groups are underrepresented in spaces of power and privilege.
The difference with India is that these divisions especially caste are ancient, codified, and deeply internalized. Economic access may improve but caste-based social exclusion persists subtly, institutionally and pervasively.
So the problem is not just that money buys merit. It is that society continues to define merit in ways that exclude those it historically oppressed
Why Do We Want to Believe in Meritocracy?
The real question we need to ask is: Why do so many people want to believe in meritocracy especially when the very person who coined the term, Michael Young intended it as satire?
One reason is that the idea is comforting. It tells us that with some hard work and education anyone can climb the ladder of success. It offers hope especially in societies marked by deep inequalities. But there is also a darker side to this belief. If someone fails meritocracy allows the privileged to say, “They didn’t work hard enough,” rather than confront structural injustice. It shifts blame away from the system and onto the individual.
As Michael Sandel argues in The Tyranny of Merit, meritocracy gives people the illusion that their success is solely their own making. It flatters the ego
Worse still, it allows resentment to fester. When beneficiaries of affirmative action succeed, many from dominant groups feel wronged not because of any personal grievance but because their myth of exclusive deserving-ness is threatened. Instead of introspection, they lash out claiming the system is unfair to them now. Ashwini Deshpande's empirical work shows, affirmative action has barely narrowed the historical gaps in outcomes.
As Anand Teltumbde warns in The Republic of Caste, the system delegitimizes Dalit success as being due to quotas rather than capability.
Meanwhile, for marginalized communities meritocracy sends a cruel message: If you don’t succeed, maybe you are just not good enough.
This quietly reinforces the same casteist and classist ideologies the system claims to have moved past now rebranded with scientific-sounding but hollow theories like IQ determinism and “cultural capital.”
Reimagining Meritocracy: From Myth to Justice
So, is meritocracy just another myth created by the dominant to protect their own privilege? In short, the answer is maybe yes. As it stands today, the concept often serves to justify inequality rather than challenge it. But that does not mean merit itself has no value. A reformed vision of meritocracy is possible one that is rooted not in exclusion and hierarchy but in humility justice and radical empathy. Not just the token symbolism we see today, but a system genuinely committed to equity over shallow equality.
The so-called level playing field must be rebuilt on the principles of equity where people are not treated the same, but are given what they need to start from a place of fairness. Can we reform this system? Yes but only if we have the political will.
This requires a systemic overhaul one that acknowledges the injustice still pervasive in our society. We need to actively promote social mobility strengthen and expand affirmative action and debunk pseudoscientific IQ narratives that try to biologize inequality.
Regular audits of the conditions faced by marginalized communities must be conducted. Targeted workshops, awareness programs and subsidies in education and employment must be expanded. Most importantly~ civil society must step forward not just with activism but with solidarity and sustained engagement.
Merit if it is to mean anything at all must be made inclusive and earned not by accident of birth but by conscious effort and collective reform.
P.S. I have conceptualised and written this essay. Used Gen AI for editing.