One of the most anticipated new movies of this holiday season (for me) is a biopic of Bob Dylan called A Complete Unknown. The name is taken from the lyrics of the Dylan song, Like a Rolling Stone.
It’s an apt title for the life of man who began as the completely unknown Robert Allen Zimmerman in a small town of Minnesota and eventually became a seminal figure in American and global popular music and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 for his poetry (the only musician ever to win the prize).
This title could also be applied to many others who started in complete anonymity, far from urban citadels, and became staggeringly successful figures with unbelievable lives.
One can think, for example, of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began life in small town Austria, became a successful body-builder, parlayed that into a career as a leading Hollywood action hero, married a Kennedy, and became a two-term governor of California.
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Are such lives possible in India? What are the conditions that enable the flowering of prodigious talent? And why is it vital for any society to discover talent wherever it may be born?
In some fields, it is commonplace for complete unknowns to rise to the top. Politics is the most obvious of these. One could argue that India is a world leader in the phenomenon of the nobody-turned-film-star-turned-politician (a la Schwarzenegger).
N.T. Rama Rao (brought up as an adoptee in an Andhra village) and M.G. Ramachandran (brought up in poverty as a Malayalee in Ceylon by a single mother) not only became chief ministers, but they created long-lasting political parties (and dynasties).
There are abundant other examples. From trailer-park kid Bill Clinton to peanut farmer Jimmy Carter, from chaiwallah Narendra Modi to student agitator Mamata Banerjee, from revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao to liberators (turned dictators) like Castro and Mugabe, individuals with no family history or connections have risen to the top of their political domains.
Here the key is that the field is open to all with low barriers to entry. Where these conditions do not exist, success is tied to heredity. In such cases, talent is more likely to be suppressed than allowed to blossom.
Entrepreneurship is another field that can have relatively low barriers to entry. To start with, formal education is not required. Dhirubhai Ambani never went to college. Gautam Adani started college, but never finished.
On finding success, the once completely unknown entrepreneur typically finds that even his children become household names, as the business usually stays in the family and entry to its top echelons becomes restricted to members of it.
In other fields, the talented thrive for the opposite reason. Here, the barrier to entry is high, there are well-defined standards of success, and only the most meritorious can rise to the top.
Science-and-technology and athletics are two such fields. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was born the son of a boatman near Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, aced every exam that came his way to become an aerospace scientist and India’s ‘missile man,’ and eventually President of the nation.
M.S. Dhoni from Ranchi, famously a Railway ticket collector for two years, broke into the state and national cricket teams, and then captained the national team before becoming an icon of Chennai.
And there are yet other fields with high barriers to entry in which the standards of success are not well-defined. In these domains, mostly in the creative arts, it is possible for nepotism and cronyism to suffocate the talented.
Bollywood and the several other language film industries in India are notorious for turning culture into a family business. Classical musicians and dancers frequently ensure that if they ever get off the stage (which is hard to make happen), they are succeeded by their sons and daughters.
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The argument used by the dynasts in any field (politics, business or arts) is the familiar one from eugenics—that talent is genetically transmitted. This is fundamentally contrary to the principle that talent is born in the complete unknown.
It could arrive in any family, town or village, and in any gender, any religion, any caste and any tribe. And therein lies the danger of inefficiency (not to mention injustice) in India. Let me explain.
Inefficient (or un-meritocratic) societies are those in which the most capable or fit individuals are not assigned to their most appropriate tasks. This happens because large groups are excluded from accessing the resources that would allow individuals within these groups to discover their talents and abilities.
These discriminations become systematic through practices like racism and casteism. As a result, ‘mediocre Brahmins’ do the work that could be done better by ‘smart Dalits.’
Since the distribution of natural ability in any domain is random within any population, in India, a talented person is much more likely to be Dalit than Brahmin, since the former outnumber the latter by a ratio of 4:1.
The lives of all ordinary citizens (like you and I) would be better if Indian society were one in which talent could find its way to the place where it could have the most positive impact.
That is, a society in which X, the Dalit man who may be a talented poet, and Y, the Adivasi woman who may be gifted in geometry, could actually discover and utilize their talents.
Not only would they be better off individually, but they would also create external benefits for others, including those who would deny them the opportunity to become educated. It is in our self-interest to be egalitarian, so that we can all benefit from the extraordinary talents of the completely unknown.
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The author is a professor of geography, environment and urban studies and director of global studies at Temple University.