Our challenge is to turn workers into capitalists

Hard work may well matter more than Harvard but India's multitudes must start piling up company shares if we expect to reduce the gap between wage-earners and capital-owners

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Years before Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy urged the country's youth to work 70 hours per week, drawing a wide range of 'emojis' in response on social media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had struck a chord with the same demographic bulge by drawing a distinction between "hard work" and "Harvard." It was a point of political rhetoric, with the latter meant as a stand-in for privilege. In a country of multitudes aspiring to lifestyles the internet had begun exposing them to, it held a special appeal among those who saw themselves on the hardwork side of that split. The actual hours they worked wasn't relevant-nor its intensity, let alone productivity. Modi's formulation was memorable for the politics of it. Here was the leader of a rightist Bharatiya Janata Party who had deftly taken away a platform long used by leftist parties. Once upon a time, Communists had been the ace champions of India's havenots, ever ready to expound on a "class struggle" led by workers against capitalists. In their book, one was either an earner of wages or an