India & Meritocracy: How India's Past Shapes What It Celebrates

Every year, India's newspapers devote prime front-page real estate to celebrating IIT-JEE toppers—students who excel in the brutally competitive entrance exam for the Indian Institutes of Technology. To those of us who live in urban, blue America, which seems anywhere between timid and hostile to the idea of celebrating success and ambition, this feels culturally refreshing. Observing this enthusiasm for merit-based achievement, a friend recently asked if there was something inherently ‘pro-market’ about Indian culture. The short answer: I'm not sure, but the types of success that India celebrates is actually much more a product of its socialist beginnings than some libertarian streak in Indian culture.

India's entrance examination system is genuinely meritocratic. There are no legacy admissions, no essays, no extracurricular considerations - your rank depends entirely on your performance in standardized tests like the IIT-JEE for engineering, CAT for management schools, or UPSC for civil services. In a country often criticized for endemic corruption, these examinations stand out as true bastions of meritocracy. For example, in 2023, over a quarter of students who qualified for admission into elite engineering institutions came from families earning less than $1,200 annually, and hundreds had illiterate parents. While one can debate whether standardized tests should be the sole criterion for selection, they excel at two things: selecting for baseline cognitive ability and effort, and creating paths for social mobility.

This system emerged from a particular historical context. In the early days of the republic, India embraced socialism and remained deeply suspicious of markets, while maintaining a strong commitment to science, technology, and merit-based advancement. This shaped what came to be considered 'merit' and 'success.' In a system where the private sector was artificially constrained, advancement meant securing positions in government or large corporate conglomerates—all flowing through elite educational qualifications. Excellence became defined not by value creation or innovation, but by one's ability to secure a position in existing hierarchies.

This influenced what Indian society chose to celebrate and reward. When societies want to encourage certain outcomes, they need concrete, visible proxies they can reliably celebrate. In market economies, wealth often serves as a reasonable proxy for value creation - while imperfect, it's generally difficult to accumulate wealth without providing something of value to others. But in socialist India, with entrepreneurship nearly impossible for ordinary citizens, significant wealth was more likely to signal accident of birth or corruption. For honest citizens, educational achievement became the reliable indicator of merit and future prospects.

In this environment, families naturally optimized for success in the selection process—which provided a legible, guaranteed path to a better life accessible to a large fraction of the population. The celebrated traits became those that correlated with success in well-defined zero-sum games: diligence, perseverance, conformity, and competitive spirit.

While these are necessary, they sit in natural tension with other crucial ingredients for value creation—competitive excellence pulls against collaboration, conformity works against risk-taking, and external validation suppresses the self-reflection needed to find your comparative advantage. A "me against the world" orientation, while adaptive for individual success in competitions, can actively work against the positive-sum thinking needed for value creation.

How is this likely to change? The Indian government needs to pick a bunch of low hanging fruit - there are still far too many constraints on Indians' ability to buy, sell, and innovate. Indians must come to view entrepreneurship — not as a trendy pathway to fame or quick wealth through venture capital — but as the core engine for wealth creation and prosperity. Now, one could argue if such policies are in fact downstream of culture. But that's an argument for another time and a 35% likely future post.