Mythologies Of Merit

The U.S. is a racist country, with much of today’s racism directed against Indians and similar "brown"people, as some recent brutal assaults have shown. However, there are a few indications of at least somemovement in the direction of its promise of an equalitarian society. One such was the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding affirmative action in the universities. This was unexpected from what has beenprimarily a Republican-appointed court considered to be conservative; but perhaps the fact that 65 majorcorporations of the U.S. - including Microsoft and GM - supported the petition for continuing affirmativeaction had some effect. The court indeed cited this support in its decision: "Major American businesses havemade it clear that the skills needed in today’s increasingly global market place can only be developedthrough exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints."

The Supreme Court’s decision affects not only "race." Caste is also being raised as a factor ofdiscrimination in the U.S. A Bengali professor in engineering at the University of Michigan has gone to courton the issue, claiming that he was discriminated against by the former head of his department, a Brahman. And,following the international Dalit conference at Vancouver, a team of U.S.-based Dalits led by Dr. K.P. Singhjoined Jesse Jackson’s "Rainbow Push Coalition" in Chicago June 21-25 to discuss hiring practices withAmerican corporations. Thus the issue of caste discrimination has been brought to the head offices of some ofthe important multinationals. Some of them- for instance, MacDonald’s - have promised to look into the issueof their employment in India.

It is a sad comment on the state of Indian industrialists’ social consciousness that such discussionshave begun in an organised way in the U.S. before they have been thought of in India itself. Dalits themselveshave been raising the issue for several years now, most recently with "Diversity Marches" being organisedin Delhi to present petitions to the FICCI. There are also political signs that Indian business also cannotignore - warnings by Chief Ministers such as Karnataka’s S.M. Krishna that some form of private sectorreservation is "inevitable," the Bhopal declaration, an announcement by (now ex) U.P. Chief Minster Mayawati thather legal section is working on the issue, and so forth. But, Indian business as a whole has maintained adeafening silence on the issue of combating caste discrimination.

The different histories of compensatory discrimination in the different countries are clear. They haveaffected everything, including the whole discourse of the issue. The U.S. focus on "diversity" implies notonly that there is social value in having all the major groups of the society reflected in its structures ofwealth and power. "Diversity" justifies affirmative action in terms of the needs of the society as awhole, not simply of specific groups among it. Racism is contrary to overall societal interests; and in orderto overcome racism, it is necessary to take account of this social (not biological!) reality called "race,"as the Supreme Court has recognised. Many commentators have remarked that the need to show diversity reflectssome of the global concerns of multinational companies: they lose if their power structure appears to beentirely white. If so, this shows a greater understanding among the companies than in the reactionarypolitical forces now holding power in the U.S., which have been opposing affirmative action. In contrast,Indian industry sees competitiveness as crucial in a global era - and sees "reservations" as contrary tocompetitiveness.

What is important, here, though, are the different underlying assumptions in the two countries. In the U.S.it is now assumed by most that that there is an equal distribution of capacity among all social groups, thatapparent differences are social and not biological - and that the very existence of diverse social groupsmeans that the businesses which seek to provide commodities for their markets have to have representation.Thus U.S. companies supported the affirmative action case not out of altruism, not out of some perceivedrecompense for past oppression, but out of their own perceived self-interest. Diversity makes companies morecompetitive, not less.

In India, in contrast to the framework of diversity used to justify affirmative action in the U.S., theoperative concepts have been "merit" and "social justice." Dalits and OBCs have generally argued forreservations in terms of their own needs, largely in terms of the requirement of social justice which Indiahas committed itself to from the time of independence. This is of course quite justified, but that has left avacuum regarding the social consequences of reservations, which has been filled by the reactionary assumptionsthat have always underlain caste hierarchy: it has allowed opponents to talk of "merit." Within theframework of categorizing posts and examination results, "merit candidates" get contrasted to "reservationcandidates." The whole question thus takes on the appearance of a pseudo-opposition, in which social justiceis to be achieved at the cost of merit. It is as if inferior, incapable candidates from low castes are to bepromoted at the cost of the overall efficiency and effectiveness of an enterprise or organisation. Whereas theU.S. debate assumes an overall equal distribution of capacity among social groups, in India the assumptionseems to be that the unequal showing of different caste groups on examinations, in education, etc. is a resultof actual different capacities. In addition, reservations have been tied in with the general inefficiency ofpublic sector enterprises and bureaucracies.

The idea of "economic reservation" or "reservation designed to relieve poverty" is another way ofignoring the social realities of caste. Here the idea of "social justice" is extended to take in the pooramong the upper castes. In fact, the Supreme Court of India itself began this when it imposed the idea of "creamylayer" on OBC reservations. Leftist groups have been particularly vulnerable to this error, with thetendency to see all social issues in terms of poverty and class discrimination. Thus today’s farce ofpromising reservations to the "poor among the upper castes" is only the latest in a long tendency ofavoiding the real issue - the unique social roots of discrimination, in this case caste.

Terms like "merit" are insulting - and erroneous. They allow the reality of ongoing processes ofexclusion and discrimination in the society based on social identity to be shoved aside, ignored. In fact, theprocesses of caste discrimination begin from birth, both from poverty and lack of opportunity and from thereal prejudice faced by Dalit and (to a lesser degree) OBC students in schools. In hiring for jobs, and inmaking judgements about "merit" and "qualification," caste and kinship links and identities arerampant, a fact everyone knows. That they continue even when Indians move abroad is shown by the currentUniversity of Michigan case. The discourse on "merit" itself is highly questionable. It is only when thisis recognized and all-around remedial steps began to be taken - at the level of providing for all the poor anddiscriminated against by measures such as truly universalizing education, and at the level of affirmativeaction designed speed the attainment of diversity - that Indian society will truly universalize itself, andIndian industry will achieve goals of true competitiveness and efficiency.

Gail Omvedt is Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library