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- Convenor:
-
Annalena Oppel
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
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- Format:
- Experimental
- Stream:
- Rethinking development
- Location:
- Palmer 1.11
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 28 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Meritocracy describes how individuals narrate and justify success and failure. It is framed and discussed in contexts of modern society. When agents of development become 'brokers of modernity' through efforts of progress and betterment, it becomes difficult to ignore it as an underpinning ideology.
Long Abstract:
Meritocracy is an ideology of increasing popularity and recognition in the public and scholarly discourse. It serves as a framework to describe individuals' beliefs about sources of inequality (deserved based on merit or un-deserved based on luck) whereby meritocratic tendencies lowered their demand for redistribution. Others linked meritocracy to a declining concern for inequality overall, which aligns with its origin as a dystopian future. Surprisingly, it is much less studied in the global South. This is despite the many development paradigms that include individual betterment, livelihoods, educational advancement, graduation from social protection schemes, and entrepreneurship - elements for which social mobility can serve as an umbrella term. Seen as inherently positive and something to strive towards, there has not been a moment of pausing and reflecting on their role in fostering meritocratic beliefs in global South societies and what that means. This is relevant given the rising concerns around meritocracy and its dynamics of eroding forms of public solidarity, ignoring structural barriers, and creating a heightened sense of individual agency. Unpacking elements of social mobility from an ideological angle - as well as where concepts stem from and where they are supplanted - can open a platform for thinking about alternative views. More importantly, a critical engagement with concepts established and promoted by the global North that are seen as inherently positive can signal a willingness to make space for voices less heard and considered in processes of national and global agenda setting.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 28 June, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Caste-level educational mobility in India remains extremely low over the last 150 years, and imperfect compliance to reservation policy hurts the mobility of underprivileged groups. Contrary to previous scholarship, this paper argues that even in the absence of endogamy, the rigidity persists.
Paper long abstract:
Introducing a large new data set on college graduates in India (1857-2017), I show that educational mobility in India during this period was extremely low at the level of caste groups. By simulating counterfactual estimates, I show that perfect compliance to reservation policy could have substantially increased the rate of social mobility for the underprivileged lower caste and tribal groups. Most of the previous literature argues that the rigidity in Indian society is driven by caste-based endogamy. However, by analyzing social mobility at the level of exogamous sub-caste groups, I show that the absence of endogamy among the sub-groups does not promote higher rates of social mobility for those sub-groups.
Another common explanation is that affirmative action may select relatively less meritorious students from underprivileged backgrounds, which in turn leads to 'merit-based mismatch', reflected by higher rates of drop-out and switching of majors. I present evidence that the difference between (rank at) admission and (rank at) graduation is not specifically different for lower caste groups when compared to their upper caste peers. I further show that the distributional characteristics of graduation ranks for lower caste students remains consistent across decades, particularly since the introduction of reservation policy.
Threading these observations together, this paper suggests that seemingly informal yet historically persistent discriminatory institutions are a hindrance to accumulation of human capital and social mobility in the long run, particularly for underprivileged social groups.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research on implementation of India's Right to Education Act, this paper explores tensions between discourses of quality education as something all have a right to and as something that only the meritorious poor deserve access to.
Paper long abstract:
The idea that merit should be rewarded has long been common-sense in educational institutions. Criticisms of affirmative action programs that aim to promote social mobility for disadvantaged groups through education are often underpinned by the notion that identity is being prioritised over merit. In this paper, we explore how discourses of merit rub up against discourses of rights in the context of implementation of India’s Right to Education Act in the city of Lucknow. We focus particularly on Section 12.1.c of the Act which requires private schools to educate underprivileged children in return for a modest state reimbursement rather than fees. This policy aims to desegregate private school classrooms, which tend to be fairly homogenous in terms of class-caste, and to promote upward social mobility among disadvantaged families. In our interviews with educators and parents as well as in media reporting and parliamentary debates, ‘merit’ is deployed both to support the policy – ‘disadvantaged students can be even more talented than privileged students’ – and to critique it – ‘selection of disadvantaged students for this provision should be based on ‘merit’ rather than a lottery’. Both critical and supportive narratives of merit were at odds with the notion of quality education as a right of all children. We explore the implications of these tensions around ‘merit’ for thinking about rights-based policy and redistributive politics more generally.