The Burden of Merit: A Satire on Indian Meritocracy

The Burden of Merit: A Satire on Indian Meritocracy

Once upon a time, in the glorious land of Sab Kuch Theek Hai, a young man from a Scheduled Caste cracked the IIT entrance exam. As he stepped onto the campus, people whispered, “Must be reservation.” Not “Must be brilliance,” Not “Must have studied while fighting centuries of oppression,” Not even “Must have burnt midnight oil while the neighbours reminded him he didn’t belong here.” No. Must be reservation. You see, in the Indian imagination, merit is a fragile creature. It only blooms in WiFi-enabled rooms, with English-speaking parents, private tuitions, and clean drinking water. The moment merit appears in a Dalit body, the entire circuit blows up. Because here, merit is caste-coded. A Brahmin boy failing in life is a “misguided genius.” A Dalit girl topping the exam is “lucky.” A Thakur in poverty is still “Kshatriya.” A well-earning Valmiki in a city apartment is still “reserved.” And when this is pointed out, the privileged fold their arms and say, “But maine thodi na kiya bhed bhava? Toh main kyun sahu?” Ah. There it is. The national anthem of denial. You didn’t personally dig up the manual scavengers, sure. You didn’t personally run the Brahmin samaj WhatsApp group that blacklists “lower caste” tenants. You didn’t personally decide that Dalits must sit apart in village weddings. But you personally enjoyed the escalator built on the backs of those who were never allowed in the building.

You inherited the privilege. Just like the dalit or adivasi inherited the wound. You didn’t swing the whip. But you live in the house built by the ones who did—and you’ve never paid rent. Your name, your network, your “normal” is a product of that privilege. You didn’t cause the system. But you maintain it every time you ignore it. Now, let’s return to the IIT boy. The one you say had it easy. He didn’t just crack JEE. He cracked silence in the classroom. He cracked stares in the hostel. He cracked “jokes” about quotas that everyone laughed at, except him. He cracked the weight of having to be excellent just to be considered equal. Meanwhile, the upper-caste “poor”—armed with ancestral land, good English, and surnames that don’t raise eyebrows—walk into job interviews where no one checks their merit at the door. They rent flats without being asked, “Aapka jaati kya hai?” They fall in love without worrying, “Shaadi mein problem toh nahi hogi na?” Even when broke, they are rich—in surnames, in temples, in textbooks, in trust. But still, they cry: “What about us?” Yes, let’s talk about “us.” About how merit doesn’t mean equality of marks, but equality of starting lines. Yet we pretend the son of a landless Dalit farmer and the daughter of a retired IAS officer from the general category are just two students, as if caste is a setting you can turn off before the exam. They say, “But he got admission, didn’t he?” Yes. Admission. Not exemption from discrimination. Not immunity from isolation. Not protection from humiliation when someone screams, “Oh, he got in through quota!” during college fests— as if that nullifies every mark, every all-nighter, every sleepless night of wondering if he really belongs. Reservation is not a crutch. It’s a seat at a table we were never invited to. And even then, someone’s always asking us to prove we deserve to sit.

But of course, the caste-deniers—armed with data-less outrage and WhatsApp PhDs—insist, “We should focus on economic criteria.” As if caste is about poverty. As if landlords don’t refuse rent to Dalits with a 25-lakh salary. As if Shambuka and Rohith Vemula weren’t centuries apart, yet united by the same truth: Merit is not enough when your birth offends the system.

We ask the oppressed to be Gandhi, Ambedkar, Kalam, and Buddha—all rolled into one— But we never ask the privileged to be decent. So the next time someone says, “I believe in meritocracy,” ask them: Whose merit do you believe in? The one coached by family, society, school, surname, and city? Or the one who survived the system just to sit in the same exam hall? And when they say, “But caste is no longer relevant,” Smile. Gently. Then ask: “What’s your surname?” And what have you done to make it irrelevant?