CAN YOU SUCCEED WITHOUT PRIVILEGE?

KAKALI DAS

“If s/he can succeed, why can’t you?” – Society

A billionaire once said, “If you’re born poor it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor it is your mistake.”

Everyone around us, we see this idea that hard work is the clearest way to achieve financial success. Be it movies with ‘rags to riches’ storylines or news coverage of exam toppers studying under street lamps, popular culture is always sending us the message that there’s no disadvantage we can’t escape with some heartfelt hard work.

Sociologist Max Weber traces the roots of this phenomenon to the rise of the Protestant work ethic in 16^th century Europe, that saw work as an inherently virtuous act of worship. This idea became entrenched with the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century. As economies began to grow around the large-scale production of goods, workers began to leave a slower rural life to migrate to newly emerging cities, where they could work at factories for better wages.

This system dangled a promise to this new urban workforce, that hard work – even in the face of gruelling hours and inhuman conditions – leads to financial rewards and prosperity.

On the other said of the world, in 19^th century colonial India, in a bid to recruit the greatest Indian talent, the British introduced standardised exams for administrative services. These exams were meant to ensure that only the meritorious would gain entry by virtue of their hard work and abilities, and not by any special privileges of birth.

Since then, India’s adherence to the open, standardised exam for schools and jobs has led to the rise of an elite that claims to have earned their position through a fair process that confirms they are deserving of their success. This is perhaps most visible through mainstream Indian society’s strong opposition to reservations for oppressed groups, which get described as the death of merit.

But, what’s wrong with this idea?

This whole idea that hard work equals success is based on one important assumption – that we live in a meritocracy, where winners get ahead because of their inherent skills or determination. But this conveniently ignores the fact that we live in a fundamentally unequal society, where some people don’t have access to the privileges that others have had for generations.

The presumption that hard work alone leads to success – and that laziness leads to failure, and success emerges from the intelligence and work ethics of an individual – follows the students their entire career.

The academics often ignore the research on students’ failure that shows it emerges from a number of factors. The reality is a far more complex interplay of individual attributes of social structures which unfairly affect some more than others.

The late French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that underprivileged students fail not because they are less intelligent than the middle-class students, but because the curriculum is biased towards what middle class students are already accustomed to. It is this that reinforces the relationship between social class and success in higher education across the world.

The idea of meritocracy then, doesn’t actually hold up because in the race towards success, we are not at all starting from the same point. Does hard work equal success for the people who are already advantaged? Yes, much of the time it does. Because that advantage guarantee the kind of resources and access that can help build the talent, required to excel in any field. On the flip side, we are made to believe that if we haven’t achieved success, it must be because we are lazy.

So, failure is framed as an individual shortcoming rather than a result of deep social inequalities. But here’s the thing – no matter how hard some people may work, all their efforts still never lead to success, because it turns out, hard work is not all that you need to make it in life.

And if you start off without any of those other privileges, hard work alone can’t really get to pass every roadblock on the way to success. So, may be instead of glorifying hard work as a sure-fire means to success, we should question what holds some people back from fulfilling their complete potential, despite their hard work.

It’s time we ask ourselves what it really means to build an equal society, where every individual is able to pursue success, irrespective of where they come from.

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