Congrats! You won the ovarian lottery

Most of us reading this might have benefited from the ovarian lottery.

That you were born in a family that believed in educating you, even if they did not have many resources. Call it ‘genes, even if no means’. That you were born to parents, who let you think, and to think independently. That you were born to parents who tolerated your idiosyncrasies, and even paid for it. That you were born in a certain time of the nation, that afforded better privileges to you. Many of those that we take for granted and don’t even think about.

Genesis

Many of our fellow then-citizens moved to the United States in early-to-mid-90s in search of better/advanced education and better livelihood. But then they got lucky with the green card lottery. That alone did not guarantee material success or happiness quotient. But it surely did provide them with better civic infrastructure, and predictable quality of (a better) lifestyle. Just being at the right place, at the right time gave them better living standards. Most of those who migrated have to think whether they could have done so if they were born into the wrong family. This is where the ‘Ovarian Lottery’ needs contextual discussion.

The ‘Ovarian Lottery’ is an idea, borrowed from John Rawls, a Harvard philosopher and author of A Theory of Justice. Ace investor Warren Buffett has used this concept in many of his speeches.

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Has something changed in India in the past nearly three decades? Surely the opportunity to have better economic outcomes has improved. But the quality of living, even in the top Indian metros has deteriorated. While we boost of India’s low-cost high-impact ability to send satellites into an orbit, we are still struggling with potholes, (lack of) pavements, and critically the dangerous mindsets that place position and power higher than citizenry. Surely not the democracy that our nation’s pioneers envisaged. But luckily the hope is that democracy is still work in progress.

Lady Luck

Now imagine being born in a caste-conscious India as a lower caste girl a century ago (this is not to opine the current differences and societal issues). That girl might have been talented and skilled, and yet her life was determined by her birth into a certain family and certain geography. That beginning set the tone for her grit-laced life. If only she were born as a male in an upper-class society, (s)he might have been well-educated, and would have counted wealth and social network as a birth right.

Luck matters…a lot. It cuts across all divides, and overcomes most of human-made society-induced obstacles that segregate people.

Many of us, who have been fortunate with success — of the material kind — like to believe that we got there by our own efforts. We start believing all others who praise the success and credit it to skills, qualification, and leadership. We don’t think that we got that solid education at a known college only because we were born into that specific family. We don’t think of thousands of others who could not get into that school, simply because of who they were or who they were not!

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What about all the opportunities we got, simply because of where and when we were? What about giving credit to luck? When something goes wrong, most of us question destiny, god, or circumstances. Yet when something goes right, why do we see it as our efforts?

Sufficient socio-economic research material is available to show that much of success of people is correlated to family and geography of their birth. Similar is the path in the corporate or entrepreneurial journey. For every individual born into a rich family and well-educated from a pedigreed campus, we can see that very few of them succeed to build on what they inherited at birth. A successful entrepreneur, after all the hard struggles and pain might simply still note, ‘the best way to be rich, is to be born rich’.

Our modern-day education makes us feel as if we are in charge and in control of everything that happens to us. We think it happens due to us, and our efforts. We like to believe that we are in charge; it’s better than the harsh realisation that you are just one individual in a world of eight billion people, and an infinite moving pieces around you. This should make us humble enough to understand that there are many forces and random events that shape the way our life eventually turns out. Life has a lot of randomness, and is under no obligation to give us what we expect.

We see so many disparities in opportunities, and in life’s outcomes for people all around us. Those unequal chances are just evidence that they got the wrong ticket in the ovarian lottery.

(Srinath Sridharan is a corporate adviser and author. Twitter: @ssmumbai)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.