Catching the disease of Meritology

 

Merit is the only option left for us to make our mark in this world of competition, especially in the age of rising artificial intelligence because merit is the key to achieving success. Merit means the right man at the right place equipped with necessary skills and natural talent to make the wonders happen in every field of life. If the merit is not followed, the consequences are not only disastrous but spread panic, trauma and desperation among the people. The recent win of Mr. Arshad is the case in point that he utilized his natural talent and the skills he acquired during his hard work and practice. Today, all the nation is feeling proud and is offering love and congrats to him. He did not belong to any influential family or person. Had the case been the same in the other areas of sports, we would have saved ourselves the humiliation of defeat at number of forums. The recent visit of our cricket team to the USA is a case in point. There is no denying the fact that victory and defeat are a part of games and sports, but repeated and humiliating defeats are not the norm at all. It is the sheer natural talent, acquisition of skills through training and hard labor with commitment that makes things move forward. To feel the pulse of this argument, we may have a cursory look at our heroes, like, science, technology, medicine, engineering, education, banking and commerce, who made their mark nationally and internationally were the men of exceptional merit and did not belong to any privileged family. The same is the case with the world heroes who rose to the heights of glory were mostly born out of poverty.

A famous Postcolonial theorist, Ngugi, remarks that poverty is not an end to itself but a path to riches. He quotes the examples of jazz music and clothes of the Fashion industry which came out of nothing. For example, jazz music came from the people who had talent, but no riches and poverty forced them to come up with the meagre sources but mainly with their talent and made their mark in the world of music. The same, Nguigi says, is the case with the fashion industry that a poor man who did not have enough money and collected rags of multiple colors and sizes and stitched them together to develop a style of his own, and the fashion industry took it up. The argument is not that all heroes must come from the world of poverty, even when it is supported by the fact that the poverty leads to riches but the condition is that one should possess talent also which can be harnessed through proper training and acquisition of skills. The basic idea behind the argument is that talent must be ensured through merit and merit only, without any consideration of recommendations. If Pakistan needs to lead its next nations in the competitive global economy, it needs to establish and propagate merit in its choice of individual to run the affairs in the upcoming world.

Every nation has done the same even in the 20^th and 21^st century, for example, the famous universities of the world offer stay and jobs to the exceptional scholars even if they belong to South Asia or Africa and further contribute to their research and development and the dividends are harvested by both the parties. The proof is the number of Pakistani scientists, engineers, men of medicine, music and sports making their mark in the world. After all, these people have proved that in their country they were counted as failures, but they made their mark on the northern side of the globe. The only difference is the recognition of talent and skills one can possess.

The famous magazine Forbes while defining talent quotes Tom Ruth to enunciate that “talent is a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving, and when talent is combined with investment of time to practice, it becomes your strength.” In order to harness this talent, the only way is through our education system where the skills of talented person must be given opportunity to sharpen the skills by putting him or her into rigorous training. But once the talented individual is ready to be launched in the market, it will benefit society only when merit is strictly observed and whole of the society, at all its levels, is suffering from the syndrome of Meritology. In the absence of such a mechanism, the talented, skilled and trained individual will be disappointed from the society and would prefer to hand over his whole asset to any foreign nation and we will again be left with untalented, unmeritorious and unskilled people. Ensuring the talent utilization through merit is the only way to save this society from further deterioration.