Elite Filtration
"Where do you live?"
A few weeks ago, I started asking my “elite” friends, including the left-lib sorts, whether they would have married their partners if -
a) They did not speak good English
b) They did not live at elite addresses
The answers were obvious, but also obviously, many got upset at me for even asking.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/opinion/rejection-college-youth.html
An academic friend sent this essay in the New York Times.
Of the exclusionary pipelines of getting into university in US and then into the private associations in them.
How was it in India?
My response to him using AI and my theory of mentoring that I have practiced for some time in my life:
Build pagdandis or patli galis, discover narrow mountain paths or side lanes as all highways are filled. Tomorrow those will become the new highways and you the Mafia toll collectors!
And I will try to be mentoring those that will challenge you then, the next pagdandi and patli gali adventures.
For me my God is on the cutting & bleeding edge! You please go and find yours?
The Age of Mass Rejection - and Why That’s Not the Real Problem
In his 2025 essay “We Are the Most Rejected Generation,” David Brooks argues that today’s youth are buckling under the weight of rejection - from college admissions to social networks to venture capital. While rejection is real, perhaps the deeper issue is this: we’ve created systems that equate institutional validation with human worth.
The problem isn’t rejection. It’s that we’ve made a single model of success the only acceptable one - and then locked that model behind gates guarded by bureaucracy, credentials, and conformity.
This isn’t just an American problem. It’s global - and India may be its most industrialized and profound as well as visible form.
India: Rejection as a National Ritual
We don’t just experience rejection. We mass-produce it.
NEET (medical):
2.4 million students take the exam yearly.
<0.1% make it to AIIMS, the crown jewel of Indian medicine.
IIT-JEE:
1 million begin the race.
<2% get into an IIT.
Only ~0.5% get top branches like Computer Sciences.
UPSC (Civil Services):
1 million+ aspirants.
~1,000 selected.
Top bureaucratic power? Reserved for the top 100.
These are not just entrance exams - they are filters of legitimacy. They determine whose aspirations are sanctioned by the state and society, and whose are not.
Yet this pales in comparison to elite sports globally.
Tennis: 87 million players. Only 100–200 earn >$100K/year.
Football: 275 million players. Only ~20,000 earn good money.
Cricket: 30–40 million players. Only ~300 earn >$500K/year.
In contrast, civil services seem fairer. You know the syllabus. There’s a rank list. But the real problem remains: you’re still trying to funnel millions into one narrow corridor.
Politics: The Final Frontier of Rejection
But what about politics?
As a friend asked: “What is the success rate in politics?”
I said a stark: “Lowest.”
Let’s do the math:
India has 3.1 million elected seats across panchayats, municipalities, and other local bodies.
Assume ~30 million people contesting at various levels over time.
For central (Lok Sabha): 543 MPs.
For state assemblies (MLAs): ~4,100–5,000 total.
To become a central or state-level legislator — the positions with real power and visibility — your odds are well under 0.01%.
And unlike exams or sports, politics offers no syllabus, no rulebook, no referee. Success depends on a cocktail of caste equations, party patronage, media strategy, grassroots connect, and money muscle. And many more variables. You can work for decades and still be denied a ticket.
It is the most open field - and the most opaque.
The most democratic - and the most Darwinian.
No one can "crack" politics the way they "crack" IIT or UPSC.
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Rejection Isn't New - Elites Have Always Been Filtered
From China’s Imperial Keju exams (Tang/Song dynasty) to India’s modern UPSC and NEET, elite filtration has always been the logic of governance:
Keju had <1% success rates, with exams in classical Chinese.
Guokao, China's modern civil services, has 2 million aspirants for 30–40,000 seats.
Korea’s Gosi culture involves years of isolated study for a few hundred elite posts.
The British learned elite exam systems from the Chinese and exported it to India as ICS (Indian Civil Services), which post-Independence became the UPSC.
But here’s the twist: even when you win, you’re still inside someone else’s machine.
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The Dropouts Who Defined the Future. What about those who refused the machine?
Einstein was rejected by elite schools. Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs - all dropouts. Dhirubhai Ambani never sat an exam. Dhoni wasn’t picked for U-19 - then built his own cricketing destiny.
Indian startup unicorns like Zerodha, Ola, Flipkart, BYJU’s - good or bad - mostly founded by those outside elite academic pipelines.
These are not exceptions. They are reminders:- Institutions don’t define value. Value often defines itself - outside institutions.
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The Real Crisis: Institutional Conformity
I say: “Everyone is not meant to be aristocracy. Then what is the meaning of aristocracy?”
We’ve taken the idea of an elite - once meant to be rare and diverse - and turned it into a mass rat race. Everyone is chasing the same 0.01% outcome, believing that life outside that pipeline is failure.
But that’s not how creativity, innovation, or leadership works. We don’t need more successful test-takers. We need more gate-makers.
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The Future Belongs to the Self-Defined. The rejection generation is real. But this generation also has the tools - and the platforms - to reject the rejection machine itself.
Build your own startup. Launch your own art. Form your own collective. Challenge the institution.
Or play its game only as long as it serves you.
Real talent often refuses institutional form. It needs room - not a funnel.
The future will not belong to the most accepted. It will belong to the most self-defined.
And your address or skills in English will not matter anymore. As they did decades ago.
The world awaits. Go, take your chances.
(With credits to the person who made the view above possible by introducing me to it)