Have you ever met a poor physician or a penniless CEO? There are these apocryphal tales of doctors dedicating themselves to the service of the community and refusing to take fees. There are also stories of CEOs who receive just $1 in salary. But remember the medical graduates in India who will do all they can to get out of mandatory medical service in rural areas. And the $1 salary is a fig leaf for actual remuneration. When Larry Ellison of Oracle took home just $1 in salary, he collected a cool $67.3 million in total annual compensation. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook also had a salary of $1, but he is worth $27.9 billion. Back home, N.R. Narayanamurthy of Infosys had a Re1 salary when he returned to the company. But his dividend income from Infosys shares was Rs 33 crore.

The Narayanamurthys and the Ellisons are rich; they can afford to make such symbolic gestures. But the average man on the street does not ever reach such financial heights. True, there are some entrepreneurs who have started with literally nothing and made it big. But, in most cases, there is a rich papa doing the backing or, at least, taking care of the home fires.

One reads so many stories of people starting in a barsati, without even a bank account. But look at their educational qualifications. They have been to the best colleges. Somebody had to pay for that. Educational loans don’t work for the poor. The banks insist on collateral against the loans. And if you have the assets to get the loan, you can’t really be poor.

A person makes the jump from poor to middle class and from middle class to rich mainly through hard work. But hard work won’t take you anywhere unless you have the education to back it. What professions do the poor gravitate to? In the US, top ranking is nursing aide. And these are aides, mind you, not full-fledged nurses. The implication: they do the donkey work and get paid peanuts. The other “poor” professions are cashier, cook, maid and janitor. None of them require any education, though some amount of vocational training comes in handy.

Is there any lesson in all this excepting for the hoary saw: education maketh the man? Yes. There are some professions that straddle more than one income category. A sales supervisor, for instance, features all the way down to the low-income groups. Become one and it may be possible to move from one category to the other, the way India has recently become a low, middle-income economy. Physicians, CEOs and lawyers have a presence only at the very top. Managers are fairly ubiquitous, but that may be a definitional issue.

A caveat is in order here: This is US data and cannot be extrapolated to India. But an Indian matrix for Brahminisation, Westernisation and Sanskritisation will be available some day.