Root for the complete unknown so that merit works for everyone

Prodigious talent can arise anywhere. We all benefit when society allows the truly talented to be discovered and encouraged

- SANJOY CHAKRAVORTY

One of the most anticipated new movies of this holiday season (for me) is a biopic of Bob Dylan called A Complete Unknown. The name is taken from the lyrics of the Dylan song, Like a Rolling Stone. It's an apt title for the life of the man who began as the completely unknown Robert Allen Zimmerman in a small town in Minnesota and eventually became a seminal figure in American and global popular music and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 for his poetry (the only musician ever to win the prize).

This title could also be applied to many others who started in complete anonymity, far from urban citadels, and became staggeringly successful figures with unbelievable lives. One can think, for example, of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began life in small-town Austria, became a successful body-builder, parlayed that into a career as a leading Hollywood action hero, married a Kennedy, and became a two-term governor of California.

Are such lives possible in India? What are the conditions that enable the flowering of prodigious talent? And why is it vital for any society to discover talent wherever it may be born?

In some fields, it is commonplace for complete unknowns to rise to the top. Politics is the most obvious of these. One could argue that India is a world leader in the phenomenon of the nobody-turned-film-star-turned-politician (