Karamchari To Karamyogi

Meritocracy has transformed cricket, streaming & PE. A lesson for civil service reform

- Manish Sabharwal

Covid is a human tragedy but accelerated three meritocracy revolutions – IPL, streaming platforms and private equity (PE) – for cricketers, actors and entrepreneurs. These revolutions feel independent but are powered by the same force; the shift of power from vertical hierarchies controlled by traditional elite to horizontal networks that value talent.

We must use lessons from these meritocracies to the last remaining binding constraint for India’s prosperity and inclusiveness; our 25+ million civil servants (they would be the 50th largest country by population).

As 2022 starts, an average IPL cricket team is worth Rs 6,500 crore (it was Rs 500 crore in 2014), India’s 30+ content streaming platforms have 350 million users (this was 20 million in 2014), and private equity investments will cross $70 billion this year (this was $5 billion in 2014).

These networks have become capital magnets and talent nurseries that the Ranji Trophy, cable television and banks couldn’t. It’s impossible to know if merit attracts resources or resources attract merit but clearly magic happens when they dance together via competition, innovation, specialisation, experimentation and differentiation.

The book The Chessboard and The Web by scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests updating our mental maps of power. Traditionally power was exercised through vertical hierarchies; a chessboard on which the elite played games of power via single centres, gatekeepers, rulemaking, institutions and coercion.