The Caste of Merit is a brilliant contribution to the study of both privilege and meritocracy in contemporary India. It is a powerful intervention in our ongoing debates about diasporic mobility and a genuinely novel treatment of caste as an enduring reality for those struggling to make their way in today’s world of competitive high-tech career trajectories. A distinguished and innovative work, both ethnographically and theoretically.
-- Susan Bayly, author of Caste, Society and Politics in India
Subramanian’s book is profoundly historical, with a broad focus on the evolution of technical education and social life since the colonial period, as well as the ways caste continues to shape power and hierarchies in contemporary India. A valuable contribution to the growing literature on caste and its reproduction in modern times.
-- Surinder S. Jodhka, author of Caste in Contemporary India
India’s legendary IITs deserve close study by an anthropologist, and Ajantha Subramanian has produced a remarkable work that lets us see behind the curtain.
-- Ross Bassett, author of The Technological Indian
The Caste of Merit depicts how upper-caste Indians remade themselves through the ideology of meritocracy. Through her richly detailed ethnography, Ajantha Subramanian sheds new light on the troubling relationship between meritocracy and the reproduction of inequality. A must-read for anyone interested in how meritocracy works in contemporary societies.
-- Shamus Khan, author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School
With a rare combination of originality and intellectual rigor, Subramanian provides a masterful and disturbing analysis of democratic ideals, meritocracy, and the endurance of caste at the paramount higher education institutions of modern India. A timely and impressive achievement.
-- Assa Doron, coauthor of Waste of a Nation
A critique of casteism and growing inequality, this book also doubles as a fascinating history of IIT. Best read in Straussian fashion as a sympathetic story of origins.
-- Tyler Cowen Marginal Revolution
In India—as in the United States and elsewhere—academic advancement rarely occurs without a foundation of family privilege. Focusing on the IIT in Madras, Subramanian shows how upper-caste Tamil graduates have converted their caste privilege into professional prestige and resisted attempts to increase the enrollment of lower-caste groups.
-- Andrew J. Nathan Foreign Affairs
An original, incisive, and scrupulous work of historical anthropology…With a particular focus on IIT Madras and Tamil Nadu, Subramanian explores the psychology and the demographics of India’s new engineers, and the politics of caste, class, and reservations.
-- Namit Arora The Caravan
Provides interesting insights into the colonial history of engineering education and associated racialization of caste, and the making of IITs in postcolonial India as an Brahmin-upper caste space…An excellent book that those interested in sociology of education and meritocracy in India cannot ignore.
-- Suryakant Waghmore Scroll
What does ‘merit’—which is often posed as the ideal criterion for university admissions—really mean in a context where caste pervades public life? Drawing on a rich ethnography focused on the IIT Madras, in the South Indian city of Chennai, Subramanian argues that in ‘merit,’ upper-caste Indians find a liberal and secular rendering of caste…In both India and America, Subramanian argues, a fantasy of having transcended identity politics has allowed for the entrenchment of power.
-- Sneha Krishnan Public Books
Provides interesting insights into the colonial history of engineering education and associated racialization of caste and the making of IITs in postcolonial India as a Brahmin–upper caste space…An excellent book that those interested in sociology of education and meritocracy in India cannot ignore.
-- Suryakant Waghmore Economic and Political Weekly
