Surviorship bias and meritocracy in India

 I am sure our patriots can read out a list of Indian origin CEOs of major corporations across the world. And use that to promote meritocracy and lambast reservations.

I personally am for meritocracy in principle. Obviously the most qualified individual should get the seat in college or job in the company. Especially in a hyper competitive society such as India. But there is a caveat to this. With regard to college admissions the vast majority of colleges require an acceptable grade (this is subjective) in school boards and entrance exams. The vast majority of these exams are a crammer's delight. I personally was bored to death in high school as I absolutely started to hate a subject that I loved- physics. The information overload was unbearable, and most students walked around like zombies. They couldn't get a chance to enjoy the subject but had to cram and solve problems from door stopper sized "guides". I find it incredibly amusing that they were termed guides as they were anything but. If I had the equivalent of this "guide" trekking through the desert or an alpine mountain, I would be dead in a matter of days.

These guides were in reality a tsunami of confusion due to information overload. And once somehow, they got through this, they had other entrance exams to look forward to. And then they would get into a college where much of the time was spent whiling around until the final exam. 

What is required for clearing a lot of these exams is not so much smarts but time and money- to buy the guides, tuitions and so on. This type of system undermines the idea of meritocracy. Say what you want about the SATs these are accessible to every high school student in America as is the subject matter- 10th grade level mathematics and reading comprehension at a high school level. The point of SAT obviously is not solve partial differential equations but to assess strictly the analytical ability and capacity to digest a large of amount of information in a limited amount of time- thereby simulating the American academic semester.

A really cringe article in The Quint had the title "Why Indian CEOs are awesome". Let us leave aside the fact that this was written by two adult men, whose profession is writing, in their 30s use the lingo of teenagers without any sense of embarrassment whatsoever. They claimed that life in India is so strenuous and hyper competitive due to the heaving population and the attendant pressures, stresses, pollution, filth and societal and psychological abuse that those who make it are the cream of the crop.

Forgotten in this vile calculus are the 10s of millions of those who DIDNT make it. But succumbed to a life of mediocrity and despair because the stresses of an indifferent, hyper materialistic society which pretends to be spiritual had broken them. These two cretins far from taking India to task for utterly failing its citizens by not providing them with what is required to live up to their potential, actually gloated over the shortcomings as if they are some sort of bootcamp where only the strongest survive. This is the sick vile mentality that one sees with too many heavy breathing patriots, most of whom live abroad or live in gated communities far from the "riff raff".

Let us leave aside the blatant favouritism in schools and colleges whether on basis of caste, religion, gender or other factors. In my schoolteachers favored students of the opposite sex. Sometimes in a very weird creepy way. Yes that applies to female teachers as well. The golden boy in school was similar to the golden child dynamics in dysfunctional families. And where there is a golden child there is a scapegoat and teachers like dysfunctional parent's heap abuse and scorn on them nonstop. Sometimes the scapegoat is an entire class. I myself have witnessed a teacher praise her beloved student in these terms "sometimes a lotus is found only in the marshes and mud", wow thanks for that boost of self-esteem. Appreciated. Having been both a golden child and scapegoat in different eras of my school days, I am all too familiar with the dynamic. I was also the unfortunate object of non-pedagogic attention of one or two female teachers in my teen years. Put aside the Naughty America/Brazzers imagery please, it is nowhere as sexy as you imagine it to be. It led nowhere because it was just icky.

Well, that is the "meritocracy" that everyone talks about. It is odd that the same people who claim India is meritocratic, also as mentioned sneer over those who couldn't overcome the start Darwinian struggle to get ahead in India. Granted, it is nowhere as bad as it was before the 1990s but thanks to feudal lord Modi who wants serfs rather than citizens, it seems Zomato and Uber delivery driver is far as meritocracy gets you these days.