The burden of being ordinary
Human dignity, social hierarchies and the struggle to find one's place in an unequal India
By Ramphal Kataria
“An ordinary person does not merely struggle to make a living; he struggles to earn the right to live with dignity in a society that has already decided his worth by the circumstances of his birth.”
There is a peculiar difficulty in being an ordinary person in a society that has already decided, often before one has spoken, what one is worth. One is born into a particular family, caste, community, region and economic circumstance, and gradually discovers that these are not merely circumstances of birth. They become invisible coordinates that determine how others approach us, how much importance they attach to our words, how readily they trust us, and how much space they are prepared to concede to our existence.
For an ordinary person, life is rarely a straightforward exercise in pursuing happiness. It is an extended negotiation with circumstances. One learns to earn before learning to dream, to calculate before taking risks, to read expressions before speaking, and to recognise the difference between what people say and what they actually mean. There is an education that no school provides: the education of understanding human behaviour in a society where relationships are rarely free from power, expectations, material interests and inherited prejudices.
In such a society, genuine interest in another human being becomes more than a social virtue. It becomes an act of resistance against the instinct to judge, classify, dismiss and dominate.
The ordinary person discovers this through experience rather than philosophy. He learns that people do not always listen to understand; often, they listen to respond, defend their position, establish superiority or protect an interest. A conversation can become a contest of social standing even when neither participant acknowledges it. The person who has greater wealth, institutional authority, inherited status or social connections often enjoys the privilege of being heard without having to explain himself. The less privileged person, meanwhile, must establish his credibility before he can even begin to make an argument.
This is where the simple act of asking a genuine question acquires a deeper significance. To ask someone what they think, what they have experienced, what troubles them and what they need is to temporarily suspend one's own assumptions. It is to acknowledge that another person possesses an interior world that cannot be understood merely through their social identity, economic position or outward behaviour.
But this seemingly uncomplicated human gesture is not equally available to everyone, nor is everyone equally accustomed to receiving it.
The society that teaches us to calculate before we learn to trust
The ordinary person does not encounter society as an abstract philosophical arrangement. He encounters it at the ration shop, the government office, the workplace, the school admission counter, the marriage negotiation, the neighbourhood gathering and the local political meeting. He encounters it in the tone with which someone addresses him, the patience with which his problems are heard, the willingness of another person to help him, and the subtle distinction between being tolerated and being respected.
He gradually understands that Indian society is not organised merely around economic differences. It is structured through several overlapping hierarchies: caste, class, religion, gender, language, region, occupation, family background and access to political influence. These hierarchies frequently reinforce one another, creating an arrangement in which some people inherit advantages while others must spend much of their lives overcoming disadvantages they never created.
A person born into a socially influential family may inherit networks, familiarity with institutions, confidence in public dealings and the assurance that somebody will stand behind him. Another person, equally intelligent and capable, may have to build every one of these resources from scratch. The difference is not necessarily in their individual abilities. It is often in the social infrastructure surrounding them.
Pierre Bourdieu's sociological framework helps explain this phenomenon through the concepts of economic, cultural and social capital. Wealth is not the only resource that determines one's position. The language one speaks, the educational institutions one attends, the people one knows, the cultural familiarity one possesses and the confidence with which one occupies public spaces also influence the opportunities available to an individual. These resources reproduce social advantages across generations.
What appears to be an individual's success is therefore sometimes the accumulated advantage of an entire social background. Conversely, what is described as an individual's failure may conceal generations of exclusion, inadequate opportunities and unequal access to resources.
The ordinary person learns this distinction painfully. He is frequently advised to work harder, become more confident, improve his communication, develop contacts and stop complaining. Rarely does anyone ask whether the starting line was the same for everybody.
Some people inherit a place in society. Others spend their lives negotiating the right to occupy one.
The problem becomes more complicated because social inequality does not always announce itself through open hostility. Often, it operates through apparently harmless gestures. An invitation that never arrives, an opinion that is routinely overlooked, a suggestion that receives attention only when repeated by someone more influential, or an opportunity quietly redirected towards a person with better connections.
The individual may not always be able to identify the precise source of exclusion. He may even begin questioning his own worth. This is how inequality becomes psychologically embedded: society's judgement gradually begins to sound like one's own internal voice.
Erving Goffman's work on stigma helps explain how social identity becomes a lens through which individuals are evaluated before their actual abilities, conduct or character are considered. Once a person is associated with a discredited identity, he may find himself constantly managing other people's assumptions.
In India, caste has historically provided one of the most enduring mechanisms for this classification. Its influence extends beyond ritual practices into marriage, occupation, social relationships, residential arrangements and access to dignity. Religion, regional identity and linguistic differences can introduce further boundaries. Even communities that experience exclusion in one context may reproduce hierarchies within their own social structures.
The Pew Research Center's 2021 study, Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation, documented the persistence of caste identification and social separation across religious communities. It reminds us that inherited social boundaries cannot be understood solely through religious affiliation.
The ordinary person consequently learns to read a room before entering a conversation. He learns when to speak, when to remain silent, when to disagree and when disagreement might carry a price disproportionate to the matter under discussion.
This is not necessarily cowardice. It is often the accumulated wisdom of someone who cannot afford to lose the little social and economic security he has managed to establish.
The political economy of everyday relationships
There is another dimension to ordinary human interaction that is frequently ignored: the material circumstances under which relationships operate.
A person struggling to pay rent, manage household expenditure, educate children, meet medical expenses and secure employment does not experience social life in the same way as someone protected by accumulated wealth. Time itself becomes an unequal resource. For one person, an afternoon spent cultivating relationships may be an investment. For another, the same afternoon represents lost wages.
The poor cannot always afford the luxury of being unavailable. The economically vulnerable cannot always refuse an unreasonable demand. The person dependent on a contractor, employer, landlord, local official or politically connected intermediary may have to negotiate every disagreement with an awareness of the consequences.
This is where compromise enters everyday life.
Compromise is not inherently immoral. Society requires accommodation, cooperation and mutual adjustment. But there is a fundamental difference between compromise arising from mutual respect and compromise imposed by unequal bargaining power.
When two individuals with comparable security negotiate, accommodation can become a reciprocal arrangement. When one individual possesses the power to withdraw employment, assistance, recognition or access, the other person's apparent consent may conceal economic necessity.
A worker who accepts unpaid overtime because he fears dismissal is not necessarily making a free choice. A young person who suppresses an opinion because it might jeopardise a professional opportunity is not necessarily agreeing. A woman who accommodates an oppressive household arrangement because she lacks independent economic security is not necessarily exercising meaningful autonomy.
The distinction between consent and compulsion becomes particularly important in a society where material dependence is widespread.
Amartya Sen's capability approach offers a useful way of understanding this problem. Development cannot be measured merely through income or the availability of commodities. It must also be understood through the substantive freedoms people possess to lead lives they have reason to value. A person may formally enjoy a right but remain practically unable to exercise it because of poverty, discrimination, social restrictions or institutional barriers.
Thus, dignity requires more than kind treatment. It requires the material conditions under which an individual can refuse humiliation without risking his survival.
A choice made under the threat of losing one's livelihood is not always a choice made freely.
This is why the question of genuine interest in another person cannot remain confined to personal manners. It has a political-economic dimension. To understand someone genuinely is also to understand the circumstances that restrict their choices.
Asking a daily-wage worker why he cannot attend a meeting without understanding the wages he loses is not genuine curiosity. Asking a financially dependent woman why she does not leave an oppressive relationship without considering her economic circumstances is not empathy. Asking a marginalised young person why he lacks confidence without examining the social experiences that have repeatedly diminished his confidence is merely another form of judgement.
The quality of our questions reveals the depth of our understanding of inequality.
Listening as an act of recognition
Perhaps the most overlooked inequality in society is the inequality of being heard.
People are not given equal opportunities to speak, and even when they speak, their words do not receive equal consideration. Some individuals are presumed knowledgeable because of their position. Others are required to establish their credibility repeatedly. Some can express anger and be described as assertive; others express the same anger and are labelled difficult, disrespectful or uncultured.
The difference often lies not in what is said but in who is saying it.
Nancy Fraser's work on recognition and redistribution provides a powerful framework for understanding this. Injustice cannot be reduced either to economic deprivation or to cultural disrespect. Both dimensions matter. People may be deprived of resources and simultaneously denied the social standing necessary to participate as equals.
Her concept of participatory parity is particularly relevant: justice requires that individuals be able to participate in social life as peers, rather than as subordinate participants whose voices carry less weight because of their social identities.
Axel Honneth, in his work on recognition, similarly examines how experiences of disrespect, humiliation and the withholding of recognition become experiences of injustice. Recognition is not merely the pleasure of receiving appreciation. It is connected to the development of self-respect and the ability to regard oneself as a person worthy of consideration.
This brings us back to the apparently simple act of asking questions.
When someone asks, "What happened?", "How did you experience it?", "What concerns you most?" or "What do you think should be done?", the question can create a space in which the other person is not immediately required to defend his existence.
The listener temporarily gives up the privilege of assuming that his own interpretation is sufficient.
However, genuine listening must not be confused with passive politeness. A person can listen attentively and still remain prejudiced. He can ask questions while attempting to confirm an existing stereotype. He can appear sympathetic while quietly calculating what advantage he might derive from the information.
Genuine interest requires something more fundamental: the willingness to let another person's experience challenge one's assumptions.
Carl Rogers' person-centred approach to psychology placed considerable importance on empathy, acceptance and the attempt to understand another person's subjective experience. Empathy is not simply imagining that one understands another person; it requires sustained attention to how that person actually experiences the world.
There is a profound difference between asking someone a question to obtain an answer and asking because one genuinely wants to understand the person answering it.
The first is information gathering. The second is recognition.
To be heard without having to prove your worth is one of the quietest forms of human dignity.
The ordinary person's education in human behaviour
The ordinary person acquires a particular understanding of human behaviour because life repeatedly places him in situations where he must interpret motives.
He discovers that generosity and self-interest can coexist in the same individual. That affection can sometimes become possessiveness. That friendship may survive disagreement but disappear when material interests diverge. That people may celebrate someone's success while quietly feeling threatened by the independence it produces.
He also discovers that not every act of kindness is an act of solidarity and not every act of criticism is an act of hostility.
Some people help because they genuinely care. Some help because they expect reciprocity. Some maintain relationships because they are useful. Others remain close because they recognise a shared vulnerability.
The difficulty is that human motives are rarely visible in their entirety.
This is why the ordinary person gradually learns the importance of observation. He begins paying attention to patterns rather than isolated statements. He notices whether respect is consistent or conditional, whether concern survives inconvenience, and whether someone remains equally courteous towards people who cannot offer anything in return.
A person's character becomes more visible in how he treats those from whom he has nothing to gain.
Yet the ordinary person must also guard against becoming cynical. Repeated disappointments can create an instinct to distrust everybody. Once that happens, the individual begins treating every relationship as a potential transaction. The very defensive mechanism that protects him from exploitation can gradually deprive him of meaningful companionship.
The challenge, therefore, is not to stop trusting people. It is to develop a more discerning understanding of trust.
Trust is not blind faith. It is an assessment built through experience, consistency and mutual vulnerability.
An open-ended question can contribute to that process because it communicates that the other person's experience deserves consideration. It does not guarantee honesty, but it creates the conditions under which honesty becomes less difficult.
For the ordinary person, who has frequently encountered conversations in which conclusions were reached before explanations were heard, this can be a particularly meaningful experience.
The burden of preserving dignity
There comes a point in the ordinary person's life when survival alone is no longer sufficient. He wants something beyond earning a living, maintaining relationships and fulfilling social obligations. He wants to be treated as an individual rather than as an extension of his caste, surname, occupation, income, family or social usefulness.
He wants to disagree without being punished, to express an opinion without being ridiculed, to make mistakes without being permanently discredited, and to succeed without having to apologise for exceeding the expectations others had formed about him.
In a hierarchical society, however, dignity is frequently conditional.
The poor are expected to be grateful. The socially disadvantaged are expected to be accommodating. The subordinate employee is expected to be loyal. The economically dependent individual is expected to understand the limitations of his position. Even within families, age, gender, inheritance and authority can determine whose preferences matter and whose aspirations must be adjusted.
The ordinary person consequently encounters a contradiction. Society speaks continuously about respect, family values, morality, tradition and social harmony, yet frequently expects the less powerful to demonstrate these virtues through obedience.
The demand for dignity, meanwhile, can be interpreted as arrogance.
This contradiction is particularly visible in the Indian social structure, where feudal attitudes have survived alongside constitutional democracy, modern education, industrialisation and economic liberalisation. The language of equality has changed faster than many of the social relationships through which inequality is reproduced.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar understood this contradiction with exceptional clarity. His critique of caste was not confined to economic inequality or untouchability. He challenged a social order that assigned individuals unequal standing by birth and restricted the possibility of fraternity.
His insistence on liberty, equality and fraternity was therefore not merely a constitutional formulation. It was a demand for a fundamentally different social relationship between human beings.
Political democracy cannot become a durable reality when social and economic arrangements continue to deny people equal standing.
Constitutional rights do not automatically transform everyday behaviour. A person may possess equal legal status while continuing to encounter humiliation in the neighbourhood, discrimination in employment, exclusion from social networks or unequal treatment in institutional settings.
Research by Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell on the Indian private-sector labour market found that otherwise comparable job applications could receive different responses depending on the caste and religious identity conveyed by applicants. The study demonstrated that discrimination could operate even when educational qualifications and other relevant credentials were comparable.
Such findings reveal something important: inequality is not always a consequence of unequal ability, education or effort. Sometimes, it is produced by the social evaluation of identity itself.
The psychological cost of such experiences is considerable. Repeated exclusion can affect confidence, belonging and the willingness to participate in institutions that are formally open to everyone.
This is the predicament of the ordinary person: the struggle is not simply to obtain opportunities but also to preserve a sense of self in circumstances that repeatedly question his worth.
When compromise becomes the price of existence
The most difficult compromises are not always the dramatic ones. They are the small concessions made repeatedly until they begin to shape one's personality.
One remains silent at a gathering because challenging an influential person could damage a relationship. One accepts an unreasonable demand because employment is at stake. One agrees with an opinion one privately rejects because disagreement might create unnecessary hostility. One participates in a social ritual that contradicts personal convictions because refusing could invite isolation.
Over time, these compromises accumulate.
The person begins to distinguish between what he believes and what he can afford to say. Between what he considers right and what circumstances permit him to do. Between his actual personality and the socially acceptable version of himself that he presents to different people.
There is an uncomfortable psychological cost to living this way.
The individual may become exceptionally skilled at understanding other people while gradually losing the freedom to express himself. He may know how to accommodate everyone's expectations but struggle to identify his own. He may become so accustomed to avoiding conflict that even legitimate disagreement begins to feel dangerous.
Yet it would be intellectually dishonest to romanticise uncompromising behaviour.
Not everybody has the financial security, social backing or institutional protection required to confront injustice openly. A person with dependent family members cannot always afford to turn every disagreement into a battle of principles. A person without economic independence may have to prioritise survival before resistance.
There is dignity in choosing one's battles.
But there is also danger in allowing necessity to become a permanent justification for exploitation.
The ordinary person must therefore develop a difficult balance: the ability to accommodate without surrendering his identity, to remain courteous without becoming submissive, to maintain relationships without becoming dependent on approval, and to pursue material security without allowing it to consume every moral consideration.
His greatest achievement may not be that he avoids compromise altogether. It may be that he learns to recognise which compromises are temporary necessities and which ones threaten to destroy the very person he is trying to become.
Survival may demand accommodation, but it should never require the permanent surrender of self-respect.
Inequality is not merely about who owns more
The contemporary Indian economy presents another contradiction.
Economic growth has created opportunities, new occupations, expanding markets and greater material aspirations. Yet the distribution of the gains from growth remains profoundly unequal.
The World Inequality Lab working paper Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj, authored by Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty and Anmol Somanchi, estimated that in 2022–23 the richest 1 per cent received 22.6 per cent of national income and held 40.1 per cent of national wealth. The authors also cautioned that weaknesses in the underlying data could mean that the actual concentration was even greater.
These figures are important, but the ordinary person's experience of inequality extends beyond income and wealth.
There is inequality of time, because some people can purchase convenience while others sell their time to survive.
There is inequality of security, because some can withstand unemployment, illness or business failure while others are pushed into financial distress by a single unexpected expense.
There is inequality of access, because personal connections frequently determine how easily one navigates institutions.
There is inequality of voice, because some individuals can influence public decisions while others struggle to make their grievances visible.
There is inequality of social mobility, because educational attainment and individual ambition do not automatically dismantle inherited disadvantages.
And there is inequality of dignity, because the same behaviour can be interpreted differently depending on the social position of the person displaying it.
A wealthy individual refusing an unreasonable demand may be described as decisive. A poor individual doing the same may be described as arrogant.
An influential person expressing disagreement may be considered intellectually independent. A subordinate person expressing the same disagreement may be accused of indiscipline.
This is how economic and social power become embedded in everyday language.
The implication is significant: a society cannot correct its inequalities merely by increasing aggregate prosperity. It must also examine who controls resources, who participates in decision-making and whose experiences influence public policy.
The regional and cultural geography of exclusion
India's inequalities are also geographically organised.
The opportunities available to someone growing up in a metropolitan city are often different from those available to someone growing up in a small town, a remote village or a region with inadequate public infrastructure.
The difference is not merely urban versus rural. It concerns the distribution of educational institutions, healthcare, employment opportunities, industrial investment, transport connectivity and administrative capacity.
Regional identities can become another form of social capital or disadvantage. Accent, language, place of origin and familiarity with dominant cultural practices may influence how an individual is received in professional and social environments.
The same applies to religion and community identity. A person's name, food habits, religious practices or cultural affiliations may influence whether he is accepted, accommodated or treated with suspicion.
Gender further complicates this arrangement. Women frequently encounter restrictions that cannot be explained by economic class alone. A financially comfortable woman may still experience limitations on mobility, autonomy and decision-making. A poor woman may simultaneously face economic exploitation, caste discrimination and gender-based subordination.
The concept of intersectionality, developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, helps explain how multiple forms of disadvantage can interact rather than operate independently.
A person's social position cannot always be understood by examining caste, class, gender or religion in isolation. These identities interact with one another, shaping access to opportunities and the experience of exclusion.
The ordinary person therefore lives within a social arrangement where the burden of proving his worth can be multiplied by several identities.
He may be economically disadvantaged but socially influential within his community. He may belong to a dominant caste but lack financial security. He may possess educational qualifications but lack the networks that convert qualifications into opportunities. He may enjoy economic prosperity but remain constrained by gender or regional expectations.
There is no single experience of being ordinary.
What unites these experiences is the struggle to obtain meaningful control over one's life.
The paradox of understanding people without becoming a product of their expectations
There is, however, another lesson that life gradually teaches.
Understanding human behaviour should not become an exercise in manipulating it.
The ordinary person who has spent years reading social signals may become exceptionally perceptive. He learns to identify insecurity behind aggression, self-interest behind generosity and fear behind apparent hostility. He understands why people behave differently when their authority is questioned.
But knowledge of human behaviour can be used in two ways.
It can become an instrument of domination, enabling someone to exploit vulnerabilities, anticipate weaknesses and control relationships.
Or it can become an instrument of empathy, enabling someone to approach others with greater patience and less prejudice.
The distinction lies in intention.
Genuine interest in another person requires that we resist the temptation to turn every conversation into an opportunity to establish our own superiority.
It requires us to understand that another person's circumstances may be different from ours, that their fears may have a history we do not know, and that their decisions may be shaped by constraints invisible to us.
This does not mean suspending critical judgement or accepting every explanation unconditionally. Empathy is not the abandonment of reason. It is the refusal to make judgement without first attempting understanding.
A person who asks questions before drawing conclusions is not necessarily weak. He may simply possess the intellectual discipline to recognise the limits of his own experience.
This is especially valuable in a society where people are routinely reduced to categories.
We need to ask why someone behaves in a particular manner rather than immediately deciding what kind of person he is. We need to understand what economic pressures shape a worker's decisions, what social experiences influence a marginalised person's responses, what insecurity drives an individual's defensiveness, and what institutional arrangements restrict someone's choices.
Sometimes, the most important question is not what a person has done, but what circumstances have made that particular choice appear necessary to him.
And sometimes, after listening carefully, we may still disagree.
That disagreement, however, need not become an occasion for humiliation.
Finding a niche without inheriting a place
Eventually, the ordinary person arrives at a difficult realisation: society may never provide him with the space he believes he deserves.
He may have to create that space himself.
This is not a celebration of individual struggle at the expense of collective responsibility. Nor is it an argument that everyone can overcome structural inequality through determination alone. Such an argument would ignore the very social and economic arrangements that make opportunities unequal.
It is, rather, an acknowledgement that individual agency survives even within restrictive structures.
The person begins by establishing economic independence wherever possible. He develops skills, builds professional relationships, learns to navigate institutions and acquires the confidence to make decisions. He discovers that knowledge can reduce dependence, that financial security can expand the freedom to disagree, and that meaningful relationships need not be built on social hierarchy.
He also learns to become selective.
Not every gathering deserves his presence. Not every disagreement deserves his energy. Not every relationship deserves unlimited accommodation. Not every person's approval is worth pursuing.
He learns that respect cannot be demanded through continuous explanations of one's worth. It must also be reflected in the boundaries one establishes.
And perhaps most importantly, he learns to offer others the very dignity he has spent so much of his life seeking.
He listens to the person who has little to offer him. He does not confuse a person's occupation with their intelligence. He does not allow inherited prejudices to determine the quality of his relationships. He asks questions without assuming that he already knows the answers.
He understands that genuine interest is demonstrated most clearly when there is no material or social advantage to be gained.
This is where the ordinary person's personal struggle acquires a wider social meaning.
If he merely reproduces the hierarchies that once constrained him, his individual advancement changes his position without changing the society around him. He may escape subordination only to become another participant in the machinery of domination.
But if he refuses to reproduce the same behaviour, his achievement becomes something more consequential.
He creates a small space where people are not evaluated exclusively through caste, religion, wealth, status or utility.
It may be a workplace, a family, a friendship, a professional institution or simply the manner in which he conducts a conversation.
Such spaces may appear insignificant against the scale of India's inequalities. But social change also requires the transformation of everyday relationships, not merely the enactment of laws or the redistribution of resources.
The final measure of an ordinary life
Perhaps the greatest philosophical lesson of an ordinary life is that understanding people is inseparable from understanding society.
Human behaviour does not develop in isolation. It is shaped by economic circumstances, historical experiences, social expectations, institutional arrangements and unequal distributions of power.
We cannot understand an individual's silence without considering the consequences of speaking. We cannot understand apparent submission without considering material dependence. We cannot understand distrust without considering the experiences that may have produced it. And we cannot understand the desire for recognition without acknowledging the humiliation that often precedes it.
The ordinary person learns these things because life leaves him little choice. He navigates relationships where affection can coexist with hierarchy, where cooperation can coexist with exploitation, where opportunities can coexist with discrimination, and where personal ambition must constantly negotiate with social expectations.
His struggle is limitless because the demands placed upon him are rarely limited to one dimension of existence.
He must earn, care, accommodate, compete, learn, protect, adjust and aspire. He must understand people while guarding himself against their prejudices. He must preserve relationships without surrendering his individuality. He must make compromises without allowing compromise to become his identity.
And somewhere along this difficult journey, he discovers that dignity is not the privilege of those who occupy the highest positions in society. It is the minimum condition of being human.
He also discovers that genuine interest in another person is a rare form of equality. For a moment, it suspends the usual calculations of status and advantage. It allows two individuals to meet without one having to establish superiority and the other having to demonstrate worthiness.
Perhaps this is what society needs most: not merely people who know how to speak, persuade, negotiate and compete, but people who possess the patience to understand.
Because the person who listens without prejudice is doing something fundamentally different from the person who merely waits for his turn to speak.
He is recognising another human being.
And in a society that has perfected so many ways of classifying people, recognition itself can become an act of quiet rebellion.
The measure of a society is not how generously its powerful speak to one another, but how much dignity it allows its least powerful members to retain.
I did not choose the circumstances into which I was born. But I can choose not to reproduce the injustices that shaped them.
An ordinary person's greatest victory may not be reaching the top of the social hierarchy, but refusing to become its instrument.
References
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