The cult of meritocracy

ACCORDING to data presented in the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Education, 33 students died by suicide across the IITs since 2018. Is it just an aberration — the inability of some ‘weak’ students in an otherwise ‘perfect’ system to handle the academic stress? Or, do we need to go deeper, and acquire the courage to acknowledge the root of the crisis — the tyranny of meritocracy that pollutes the psychic and cultural landscape of these elite academic institutions?

Even IITs are not free from the oppressive gaze that isolates, humiliates and stigmatises those who do not belong to the so-called forward castes.

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In fact, it is high time we began to accept that the cult of meritocracy we associate with the academic centres like the IITs is pathological; it breeds violence, destroys human sensibilities, and brutalises the self. To begin with, think of the way youngsters are trained to crack the IIT-JEE examination. The mechanised process of learning that coaching factories sell right from early days of schooling, the societal pressure to prove one’s merit and fulfil parental ambitions, and the resultant anxiety or fear of failure —the journey towards the heavily pampered IITs is inherently violent and psychologically toxic. It is devoid of joy and creative ecstasy. And the myth that life is ‘settled’ once you get yourself enrolled in one of the IITs after passing through this drilling is shattered very soon. The reason is that social Darwinism or the aggression implicit in the ethos of hyper-competitiveness acquires yet another dimension once one finally enters the IIT. This time the urge to be a ‘topper’, the chronic pressure to satisfy the demanding professors through the consistency of good ‘academic performance’, and above all, the endless striving for success as defined in terms of placements and salary packages —yes, it is a war zone. This sort of meritocracy is politically insensitive, aesthetically dull and spiritually impoverished. If you fail to prove yourself as a successful warrior, you are bound to carry the burden of shame and guilt; you become a case study for professional psychiatrists; or like Darshan Solanki, a Dalit student from IIT-Bombay whose suicide became ‘breaking news’ recently, you too might jump off the eighth floor of your hostel building, and end your life. Accept it. In the name of excellence, this factory production of engineers and techno-managers is killing the very spirit that retains our sanity — empathy and communication, friendship and dialogue, or creativity and tenderness.

Moreover, the violence, be it physical or symbolic, implicit in the institutionalised caste hierarchy refuses to wither away. And the irony is that even the IITs — the centres that supposedly celebrate scientific temper, and produce the skilled workforce for the neoliberal techno-corporate market — are not free from this oppressive gaze that isolates, humiliates and stigmatises those who do not belong to the so-called forward castes. In fact, the cult of meritocracy we have referred to is not caste neutral; the objectivity it celebrates is a myth because it is inherently biased towards the cultural capital the privileged castes/classes in Indian society are endowed with, say, their English education, social networking, and early exposure to the appropriate study material in science and mathematics. Hence, to be meritorious, they tend to think, is their privilege. And those who belong to the reserved category are often seen as less meritorious, objects of pity, or just some fringe elements to be somehow tolerated and looked at with contempt. ‘What is your ranking in the IIT-JEE?’ — the likes of Darshan Solanki might have been confronted with this question time and again in classrooms, hostels and canteens. Yes, the students belonging to the reserved category are compelled to feel inferior, or less wanted. And even some serious sociological/ethnographic works have revealed the presence of these two worlds in the IITs — the pathetic tales of the broken communication that can be seen in suicide notes. In fact, when politically active IIT students from the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle remind us of the discrimination against SC/ST/OBC/ minorities communities, they too indicate the presence of what the sanitised academic bureaucracy seeks to hide — caste cleavages and psychic violence amid the rationale of meritocracy.

It is difficult to alter the logic of meritocracy and associated practice of cultural exclusion. There is no meaning in a typical official/bureaucratic response that we need only some counsellors or fancy motivational speakers to help these tormented souls to master the art of living peacefully even amid intense academic stress, or other forms of symbolic violence. Likewise, the cultural festivals, or occasional SPIC MACAY programmes, or yoga classes cannot heal the wound. Teachers as mentors could have played a key role. However, it is sad that even a significant section of the teaching community seems to carry a heavy baggage of caste consciousness and intellectual arrogance. It is, therefore, not unusual that classrooms often turn out to be terribly violent sites that classify, hierarchise and ridicule intellectually weak students from the reserved category through diverse forms of pedagogic politics. As the nuanced practice of empathy or the art of listening disappears in the name of ‘technical literacy’, what remains is the fetish for productivity, efficiency and academic excellence. Needless to add, the culture of learning tends to become extremely mechanical and dehumanised with the endless cycle of tutorials, assignments, projects, tests and grading. Under these circumstances, it is not easy to make many of these ‘successful’ IITians (already pampered by the aspiring class) grounded, open their eyes, teach them a couple of lessons of humility, and enable them to realise that to live meaningfully is to see beyond the heartless rat race, and find sanity in the ethics of care.