Dissecting The Myths Of Merit And Meritocracy PART-XII

 By Narendra Kumar Arya 

15 January, 2013 

Countercurrents.org:

Of Merit or Procedures of Coincidences:-

As Plato's saying, I have referred, opines too much obsession leads to grand delusion, merit too happens to fall in that characterisation. What we assume as merit is not the merit we encounter generally in our normal life, since individuals at different stages of life are not incapable to alter at their own how it could be attributed to ‘pure merit'; The types of schooling, parentage, education etc most of us receive often come as course of fluke rather than capabilities, potential, talent or worth because world is usually imperfect. To examine this statement we can take an example of examination and selection process of civil services which is a complex process nevertheless this is not fully mechanical, robotic, value-free and utterly objective, to call it so will be a cheap joke; because at every level of testing there is gross subjectivity and human error, relativity, fallibility and psychological underpinnings involved. The candidates applied, sorted out and called for preliminary test are not the best available not even willing due to lots of factors. Those who are declared to be successful at this stage are not the remaining best aspirants as well. May be some could not make it on time of test to present themselves, some others were involved in better options at that time, others may not have performed to their best and the only those who performed only at right moment were selected .The next stage is the most bizarre process of success as it is very much affected by subjectivity. There are numerous aspects; one is, aspirants their writing ,written material ,presentations of crammed material, creative way of presenting the write-ups etc ; another dimension is the evaluator their level of knowledge and variation in comparison to other peer evaluators, evaluation norms, adherence to UPSC norms, deviation from standard norms and guidelines, marks dissemination styles, reward policies, moods of the evaluators, pressure or leisure of time limit and its impact on evaluation process and selection of aspirants to another level .The next process is even more liable to subjectivity and presenting biased results (leaving aside the direct designs) owing to direct tete-a-tete phase though also a good measure of evaluation of mind-set and psyche of candidates but again the demerits are more likely to creep in than merits, credible to various factors. No matter how objective we develop the scheme flaws crawl like invisible insects. No one knows this better than candidates who repeatedly engage in this whole whimsical process for years with growing prowess in the field specified besides ageing .This case is almost universal prototype of failings and chance-induced entry and selection of persons in educational institutions and employment establishments-government or non-government. We are not talking about the role of nepotism, casteism, corruption and backdoor canvassing etc like illegitimate exercises freely practised. Together what havoc they produce we are well-versed with.