How meritorious is ‘Merit’?

UK theatrical release poster

‘Slum dog millionaire,’ the Oscar award winner film, on a closer reading, is a parable on the theme of merit. It raises the question of merit and resolves it through the presentation of a variety of evidences to prove the protagonist’s legitimacy to claim certain social spaces. This is akin to the conventional, judicial way of claiming legitimacy through evidences when imposed on persons from certain cultural locations. The film revolves around the question of merit and poses the question of who is meritorious enough to participate in a prestigious quiz contest that would make the winner a millionaire. The eligibility criteria for participating in such contests are never disclosed, but the hints and rules of the game are always in the air. When a ‘poor’ boy (he doesn’t look like the stereotype poor, if he does at least that, it would give him some legitimacy for his presence in a prime time visual channel space studded with stereotypes of all kinds!) from the slums of Bombay participates in a famous visual media quiz programme with his fluent English, his very presence and participation in the space lead to infamy. His fluent English becomes suspicious, his accurate answers create disbelief. Why is it that his truthful presence and brilliant answers do not legitimise him in that space? Why is it that he is forced to prove his legitimacy through submission of evidences through depiction of different events in his life? In its narrative, the film extends the location of the question of merit from the cultural domain of the visual media to the legal domain of police station, (i.e., in other words, from the domain of culture to that of law), reflecting the fact that the claim for merit is extensively pervasive in all domains of social life, because it is deeply cultural. The connotation seems to be that if you are from a slum or more specifically from  the lower strata of the society, you can claim a prestigious space in the mainstream world, only if you are capable enough to produce evidences according to the norms for not only your right answers and fluent language but also for your very presence and ‘free’ entry to that space! Such wrap-around questions as in the film, highlights the tenacity of the merit debate that happened specifically around higher academy but in fact spread over several realms of life. Taking the cue from the film one can see what constitutes merit is as important as who determines it, who can claim it and based on what criteria. It also raises doubts on the promise of education as a means of attaining meritorious space in the society. If you are educated but belong to the lower strata of the society, would your education be proof for you to claim an ‘equal’ space in the mainstream world? All such questions lead to further understanding of the cultural location as the determinant factor for the claiming of merit. The location to which one belongs determines the space which one can own up. That means there are certain norms and rules for each space. Your merit is determined by your birth or at least by the class (mostly it merges with the caste) from which you come from, i.e., the socio-cultural space to which you belong to.

When speaking about merit, it is customary in India to link it with the Mandal-reservation debate. It is argued here that it is essential to detach the question of merit from the Mandal-reservation discourse mainly for two reasons. Firstly, the question of merit is deeply embedded in the layers of democracy and the Mandal-reservation debate only provided the historical juncture for this to burst out into the open. Secondly, the detachment of the merit discourse from the Mandal-reservation debate is essential in order to delimit it from the sphere of economic and participatory parity of distributive justice. Binding merit to the Mandal-reservation debate conceals the all-encompassing multiple meanings of merit that arise in different contexts. Merit and reservation are posited in this discourse as being antithetical to each other by making a framework of dichotomy.(Nataraj.V.K. 1999. “Reservations seeking new perspectives.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol.34. No.34/35. Aug 21-Sept.3.) In the debate, merit is an essential prerequisite for representation in the scholastic and economic domains, but it is not merely that. It is equally a condition for gaining legitimacy in cultural and political domains. In this way, it is a qualification to be acquired for claiming a share in the modern nation building. It is the ample share of citizenship needed to be acquired without showing one’s presence excessively. In short, it is a concept inherent as a conflict within the larger and familiar concept of equality, the attractive offer of democracy. When the Constitution assures that all are equal in front of law, it presupposes the domain of law as a sacred space that acts above the constituted sphere of culture. Equality always deflects from diversity. One can’t be equal by being different from the prevailing social norms; one needs to disown certain cultural differences at least temporarily in order to be equal. In this way, equality (though indirectly) demands a kind of homogeneity which makes the promise of equality hollow and unattainable. So, in order to attain an equal space one needs the qualifying concept of certain merit. The invisible (it indeed is visible at crucial points) norms of this qualifying concept is determined by meritorious groups who have earned legitimacy to move in certain spaces historically familiar to them. Merit is a relational concept which varies from context to context and, according to institutional practices and social structures, but always with an overarching implication of culture.