Recently, one of the video snippets of Humans of Bombay founder Karishma Mehta went viral over social media. The snippet in question had Mehta defending herself against the charges of privileges levelled against her. She spoke eloquently about how she is privileged in the sense that her father had her sent abroad for education.
But she was quick to remind the listeners that she paid off the one lakh debt she took from her father and she did not piss away her education, and in that way, she was a SELF-MADE person.
The ‘Rags To Riches’ Trope
A quick perusal of Ms Mehta’s LinkedIn profile suggests that she likes to portray her narrative in the form of “rags to riches”. It’s just her rags time meant getting an education at home and abroad and starting a page, the concept of which was borrowed from an already existing page, “Humans of New York”.
However, to say that she is alone in this tone-deaf argument will be a mistake. She is just following a broad pattern that has engulfed the world’s imagination and our country’s as well.
The obsession with ‘rags to riches’ in human imagination is not new. We like stories where our hero struggles in their life and triumphs in the end. That’s what makes them heroes. Our stories, popular culture, movies, music, epics, literature, etc, are saturated with this trope. Even gods had to struggle in the beginning; we are mere humans who just wish to be seen in this godly light, if not more.
Our Prime Minister famously struggled throughout his life and singlehandedly changed his fortune from a Chai-walla to India’s biggest leader. He has a major penchant for this story, and he occasionally peppers it with multiple episodes of him fighting with crocodiles to his alleged days in the University where he topped despite his adverse circumstances. Basically, there is nothing new about this form of teleological storytelling.
In America, the founder country of meritocracy, this trend can be traced back to the popular literature phase of “success novels”. The most famous of which was Horatio Alger’s “From Rags to Riches”. Alger rationalized the falsehood of the much-touted slogan of democratic capitalism “There is room for all at the top”. According to this fairy-tale narrative, everyone can make it with hard work, virtue, and a bit of luck. This became the ‘democratic gospel of wealth’.
Gone are the days when there was special respect and honour reserved for kings and queens. In a modern and industrial world, one’s kinship networks and blue blood do not matter. This anonymity and equality of condition in the newly independent America made the promise of turning rags to riches more believable and urgent.
This is where the epistemic difference between dictatorship and democracy lies. While in a dictatorship, most people know their places and the upper limit to which they can go, democracy, on the other hand, is a roulette where everybody has the chance to make it to the top, notwithstanding their social class and the limited space at the top. This promise of giving opportunity is at the heart of the democratic oath. Needless to mention, even the founder of this meritocratic promise-land reserved this promise for white men only and women, and black people were conspicuous by their absence.
Later on, Herbert Spencer took this logic of benevolent ladder-climbing to an absurdist level in his book ‘Man Versus the State’. He argued that society is a system that maintains its natural equilibrium when the state does not interfere. His ideas were a potent mix of sociology with social Darwinism and laissez-faire, free-market theory. The result of which was a new wealthy class that sniggered upon any rules and regulations over the unbridled consumption and utilization of resources. This eventually led to a meritocratic class that looked down upon anybody who couldn’t make it to the top as lazy and a bummer. Consider William Graham Sumner’s line “The drunkard in the gutter is where he ought to be”.
Liberal Democracy And The ‘Self-made’ Phenomenon
This potent mix of Liberalism and Democracy has captured our minds ever since, and after the end of the cold war, it has become one of the most hegemonic ideas in history. We are unfortunately living in this narcissistic phase of liberal democracy where it has successfully convinced an entire generation that it is the only gospel truth and that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA factor popularized by Ex- British PM Margaret Thatcher).
In such a context, where there is a promise for everyone while reality offers something else, the tendency to blame oneself for one’s failure becomes rampant. It imbues the failed ones with a feeling of impotency and humiliation since they are told that they had all the opportunities to make it, so it is their own fault that they are where they are.
Failure becomes personal, and so does success. Hence, the obnoxious phrase “Self-made”.
In such an absurd scenario, even Kylie Jenner gets to take pride in being a “self-made” billionaire. This unfair and unjust system gives the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Ratan Tata, Steve Jobs, Narendra Modi, and now even Karishma Mehta a chance to live their fairytale Cinderellaesque story. They get to be the main character while anything and everything becomes a stepping-stone and side-character in their story arc.
The acceptance of the market economy in India also coincided with the widespread acceptance of this fantasy in the minds of the middle class. The idea of merit has captured the imagination of the Indian upper-caste middle-class. For them, caste-based reservation and any kind of subsidy to the poor and tax breaks to farmers become anathema and are considered “freebies” and doles ultimately paid by them. Meanwhile, they comfortably take all their privileges for granted.
Nevertheless, the silver lining in this entire fiasco was the brickbats and response Karishma Mehta’s interview generated on social media. It shows that there are people or voices that are now hyper-aware of the intangible structure, the fabled invisible hands in all its unfairness, and thus were quick to give her a reality check.
It is a propitious time and moment to understand that we are, by and large, actors in someone else’s story, and privilege is not only to be born into riches but also to be born into the family with the right caste, religion, genes, or even something as simple as location. Fighting against the system and against all odds individually makes for a good story but not reality.
Featured image credit: Karishma Modi’s Instagram handle.