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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

When Meritocracy Starts to Feel Like Favoritism

At The Workshop, nobody said it aloud. But everyone felt it. It wasn’t a policy. It wasn’t a memo. It was a pattern. The founder, Rohit, had a rhythm … a gravitational pull toward certain people. The ones he brainstormed with, called into client meetings, turned to for “quick feedback”. It didn’t look like favoritism. But it didn’t feel like meritocracy either. And that’s where the distortion begins … not in what leaders intend, but in what teams observe. Two months after the grand town hall,...

When Meritocracy Starts to Feel Like Favoritism

At The Workshop, nobody said it aloud. But everyone felt it. It wasn’t a policy. It wasn’t a memo. It was a pattern. The founder, Rohit, had a rhythm … a gravitational pull toward certain people. The ones he brainstormed with, called into client meetings, turned to for “quick feedback”. It didn’t look like favoritism. But it didn’t feel like meritocracy either. And that’s where the distortion begins … not in what leaders intend, but in what teams observe. Two months after the grand town hall, the strategy wasn't what people were trying to decode anymore. They were decoding proximity: Who does Rohit trust? Who gets access without asking? Whose mistakes are overlooked? Whose ideas make it to execution? There were no formal rules for this. But everyone was learning them. And Rohit? He had no idea. Because in his mind, he was just moving with speed while leaning on the people who “got it” fastest. But what the team saw was something else: A quiet hierarchy of influence. One built not on titles, but on closeness. That moment It happened during a Friday sprint retro. Aman proposed a workflow change. Bold, unconventional … the kind of idea Rohit usually encouraged. But instead of responding, Rohit turned to Meera: “Let’s hold that thought. Meera, what do you think?” Meera had worked with him the longest. Her judgment was sharp. Trusted. But to everyone else in the room: Aman felt dismissed. The interns updated their playbook: “Run bold ideas through Meera.” The ops lead made a mental note: “Pitch safely, not directly.” Rohit hadn’t intended to promote a gatekeeper. But in that moment, the team had just created one. Favoritism before leaders Because leaders operate from intention. Teams live with impact. Rohit didn’t like Meera more. He simply trusted her process. She could take his half-sentence and turn it into action without much translation. He wasn’t rewarding loyalty. He was rewarding ease. But that distinction doesn’t matter when the team sees the same voices dominate every meeting. Familiarity starts looking like favoritism. And culture quietly reshapes around that perception. Echo chamber Most founders don’t wake up wanting to build echo chambers. They just gravitate … toward the people who mirror their speed, their style, their language. Here’s what happens: The founder starts ideating more with “trusted” voices. Those voices gain unofficial influence. Everyone else speaks less – not from fear, but from futility. Decision quality drops. Alignment fractures. Initiative dies. Before you know it, you’re not building a meritocracy. You’re building a familiarity loop. And in fast-growth companies, loops are sticky. Real case In a national sales team we worked with, the VP insisted decisions were data-driven. Until we ran a blind assessment. A top performer was barely visible. A mid-level player got promoted … not because of results, but because she was always in the VP’s orbit. A high-potential new joiner was overlooked because he didn’t “sound confident”. When we showed the gap, the VP was stunned. What he thought was merit… was actually compatibility. In a factory setup, a supervisor promoted the wrong person for three cycles in a row. Not due to bias. Due to comfort. He chose: The one who never challenged him. The one who echoed his thinking. The one who felt “safe.” Meanwhile, the real performers watched quietly. One line worker summed it up best: “Performance is for the reports. Promotions are for the familiar.” Team effect The damage isn’t instant. It’s cumulative. First, people stop pitching bold ideas. Then, they stop asking questions. Eventually, they stop trying to compete at all. Because the game feels rigged… even if it’s not. And that’s the real cost of the Power Paradox. The leader thinks they’re being objective. The team experiences a hierarchy of trust. Real paradox Founders say, “We’re a meritocracy.” The team replies, “Then why does the same inner circle always win?” They’re not wrong. Neither is the founder. Because power isn’t about what you say. It’s about how often you say it to the same people. And when that circle goes unexamined, it quietly shapes a culture where: Familiarity outruns contribution, access outranks talent, and initiative dies before it begins. Meritocracy is not just what you believe. It’s what your team can see. (Rahul Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He writes about the human mechanics of growth where systems evolve, and emotions learn to keep up. Views personal. Write to rahul@ppsconsulting.biz)

Meteor Over Mithila

Chirag Paswan has turned a once-fractured party into the NDA’s sharpest new instrument, giving the BJP its most credible alternative to Nitish Kumar yet.

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For years, Chirag Paswan occupied an awkward corner of Bihar’s politics - too slight to be taken seriously, too famous to be dismissed. But the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections have reordered the hierarchy. His Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), written off after a family split and an electoral drubbing, has re-emerged as the NDA’s most surprising engine of success. With just 28 seats to contest, the party has won 19, elevating its young leader from an uncertain heir to a central pillar of Bihar’s ruling NDA which won a landslide in the polls.


At one level, the 2025 polls are a story of the BJP’s dominance and Nitish Kumar’s durability. At another level, however, they are the story of an unexpectedly formidable second player: a youthful party chief with a famous surname, a flair for messaging and a knack for reading political winds as uncannily as his father, the illustrious Ram Vilas Pawan once did.


In 2020, Chirag’s fortunes seemed in freefall. The undivided LJP contested independently, fielding 130 candidates but winning a solitary seat. The setback triggered a spectacular family rupture. His uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras, split the party; the Election Commission froze the original name and symbol; and Chirag found himself leader of a faction with an uncertain future and no institutional machinery to rely on. Worse, Nitish Kumar, the long-serving chief minister and JD(U) stalwart, viewed him with suspicion. The LJP’s 2020 decision to field candidates exclusively against the JD(U), not the BJP, had helped depress Nitish’s tally to 43 seats - a humiliation the Chief Minister did not easily forget.


Yet Chirag did not retreat. He chose instead to cultivate the one alliance that had not deserted him: the BJP. Even outside the NDA fold, he refrained from criticising the party, calling himself Narendra Modi’s ‘Hanuman,’ a loyalist who disagreed only with Nitish. This sustained, almost theatrical devotion paid dividends. By 2024, Chirag re-entered the NDA and won the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, retaking the constituency that had carried his father to Parliament for decades.


His political rehabilitation was matched by strategic groundwork. Chirag’s ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ across Bihar drew enthusiastic crowds, particularly among the state’s sizeable youth population. While Bihar’s headlines were dominated by migration and unemployment, Chirag offered a counter-narrative packaged neatly in his slogan: “Bihar First, Bihari First.”


The NDA rewarded this enthusiasm with what many in Patna considered an audacious gamble: 28 Assembly seats for a party written off just five years ago. Rivals sniped that the BJP had over-indulged him; some JD(U) leaders hinted darkly that the LJP(RV)’s organisational strength did not justify so many tickets. But elections have a ruthless way of settling arguments. With his party’s victories - many in constituencies where the NDA had historically struggled – Chirag has silenced sceptics.


The LJP(RV)’s performance is noteworthy for reasons beyond its strike rate. It adds a crucial 5-6 percent vote share to the NDA. Chirag’s candidates have held their own across regions, drawing not just from the loyal Dusadh base but from first-time voters, non-Yadav OBCs and EBCs - the very groups that form the backbone of the NDA’s social coalition.


For the BJP, Chirag’s ascent is not merely pleasing but strategically valuable. Nitish Kumar secured a record tenth term as CM, but his age, repeated defection history and thinning party bench have long concerned the BJP. For years it has lacked a credible, compliant alternative within the NDA - someone who could replace Nitish one day or at least moderate his bargaining power.


Chirag, with his unabashed loyalty to the BJP and his modern political idiom offers just that. A stronger LJP(RV) shifts Bihar’s power matrix subtly but unmistakably. Nitish remains the hollow centre around which the NDA’s machinery currently revolves. Yet he is no longer without rivals within the alliance. The BJP, for the first time since 2005, has a second pole to invest in.


While Chirag’s ambitions will undoubtedly test the NDA’s internal chemistry, he has turned personal popularity into organisational cohesion, and political perception into electoral reality. Bihar has produced several dynasts but few have managed to escape their inheritance long enough to build their own identity. Chirag Paswan now looks poised to join that slim category. The prince of Jamui has stepped out of his father’s shadow and onto the centre stage of Bihar’s political future.

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