Privilege Does Not Blind. Poverty Does Not Enlighten.

At a recent conference in Shimla, a speaker paused mid-address, scanned the audience, and pointed directly at me. With a tone that was part observation and part accusation, he suggested that people like me – those from ‘privileged backgrounds’ could not possibly understand the Himachal of a few decades ago, one of torn clothes, patched garments (colloquially called ‘shatti’), and a life shaped by scarcity.

It was an interesting moment – not for its sharpness, but for its certainty. The certainty of an idea that privilege erases memory, that background determines understanding.

The irony was layered. My own background does not sit neatly within such binaries. On one side of my family are descendants of a man of means, education and intellect. On the other are generations of hill people, who lived through the very conditions the speaker described, navigating the harsh terrain and scarcity, with little more than natural wisdom and community resilience on their side.

I did not respond or interrupt, because the comment did not warrant rebuttal. Besides, I was sitting in an intellectual gathering, surrounded by a bunch of people, who would likely be described the same way. Adding another layer to this irony, there was a certain quiet amusement in being told about privilege by someone whose own lineage could fairly be described as blue-blooded.

Yet the remark lingered – not as a personal slight, but as a question worth examining. Who is best placed to understand society? And more importantly, who should shape it? Should it be those who come from privilege – armed with education, exposure, and access? Or those who emerge from deprivation – carrying lived experience and proximity to struggle?

Public discourse often treats this as a moral binary. The privileged are seen as detached, the underprivileged as inherently grounded. But history resists such over-simplifications.

Consider Dr. Yashwant Singh Parmar, whose education and exposure placed him firmly within the realm of privilege. It was precisely this understanding of law and governance that enabled him to shape institutions suited to a fragile hill state. Now consider Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Born into profound social disadvantage, he rose into intellectual privilege through global education. That combination – lived experience and structural insight, allowed him to translate injustice into enduring institutional safeguards.

These trajectories appear different, but they converge on a deeper truth: it is not origin that produces leadership, but what one does with exposure. Privilege, when unexamined, can produce detachment, but when interrogated, it can produce clarity. Deprivation, when unreflected upon, can produce resentment, but when understood, it can produce insight. In both cases, the decisive factor is the ability to convert experience, whether inherited or endured – into an understanding of systems, and then into action that serves beyond the self.

The fallacy in our public conversation lies in treating background as a proxy for legitimacy. It is not. There are those who come from privilege and remain blind to the world beyond their comfort. There are those who rise from hardship and, once they ascend, choose insulation over engagement. And there are, in both categories, those who do the harder thing – who observe, reflect, and act with a sense of responsibility that transcends their own story. What distinguishes them is not where they began, but whether they remain sensitive to their surroundings, capable of understanding structures beyond themselves, and willing to act in the larger interest of society – even at a cost.

Perhaps then, the question to ask of our leaders and institutions is not whether they come from privilege or deprivation, but whether they bring understanding and reason. Our public and political systems must learn to value both lived experience and informed perspective – not as competing claims to legitimacy, but as complementary foundations for better judgment.