Between nepotism and privilege

On 18th February 2021, social media went crazy when Arjun Tendulkar was selected by the Mumbai Indians in the IPL Auction. There are (as usual) polarized opinions about this. Depending on who you talk to, you will either hear that Arjun has been selected only on the basis of his father or that Arjun is a tremendously hard-working youngster who deserves this chance completely. I feel that the circumstances are more nuanced and there are multiple truths to this namely:-

1) Mumbai Indians have seen Arjun closely in the past few seasons. They think he shows great promise and want to develop him. This is not the first time they have taken such chances with uncapped players.

2) Arjun is extremely privileged. He has had many doors being opened very willingly purely because of his father, one of them being able to train with the Mumbai Indians team which has led to his selection.

There is no doubt that Arjun is extremely talented and hard-working. You cannot play for India Under-19 or even for Mumbai if you do not possess both these qualities. At the same time there is no doubt that he is extremely privileged to have perhaps the greatest cricketer of all time as his father. This gives him access not only to a fantastic cricketing brain but also to other great players. There are tens and thousands of extremely talented and hard working youngsters in Mumbai but how many will get access to bowl in the Mumbai Indians and India nets? How many can get Zaheer Khan and Mahela Jayawardena as unofficial mentors? How many can get to bowl at international batsman, see how they play, practice and train on and off the field? This is all due to privilege and that must be acknowledged. 

I myself have been a beneficiary of this privilege in my professional life albeit at a much smaller scale. Apart from the privileges of being a male, cisgender, heterosexual, Hindu, upper caste and upper class, I am also the son of parents who were and are at extremely senior management positions in the IT industry. I love and respect my parents. They place a very high value on honesty and integrity. They were sure for their and my sake that we should not work in the same organization at the same time. Even while sending the resumes of me and my classmates for a project in the final year of my engineering, my father explicitly told his ex-colleagues that we should not get any special preference and should go through the same evaluation process as everyone else. Alas, that did not happen. We were literally asked to choose from 3 projects that we could work on. We chose one, worked really hard and were eventually offered an internship for 9 months after we graduated. I am in no way doubting the hard work we put in but the doors were opened because of my privilege. 7 years later when I was searching for a new job, I happened to meet my father's friend at a party. We got talking about my career plans and a month later I was asked if I would like to interview at his company. The friend, also being of extremely high integrity, ensured that he was nowhere involved in the selection process. I went through 3 rounds of interviews and was eventually selected. I have no doubt that I would have been rejected had the interview not gone well but again the doors were opened due to privilege.

The acknowledgement of all kinds of privilege is where most Indians struggle. One of the recurring themes of the Bollywood nepotism debate a few years ago was star kids vehemently stating that they work as hard as everyone else so why should they be called out. As Ankur Pathak correctly pointed out in a Huffington Post article, the difference is that star kids can afford to churn out one flop after another and still get films but outsiders are lucky to get even one chance to prove themselves. Siddhant Chaturvedi put it so aptly in this video, "difference yehi hai ki jahan humaare sapne poore hote hain, wahan inka struggle shuru hota hain".