The Price of Mentorship
On journalism, public work, caste, credit, and the right to become independent
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
— Jaques, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7, William Shakespeare
Public life is a stage filled with many actors: political actors, civic actors, policy actors, journalists, social workers, institutions, community leaders, and citizens.
Everyone enters with a role, an identity, a network, and a story about why they are there.
Some hold authority; some seek it.
Some work quietly; others are repeatedly placed in the spotlight.
I want to begin with two beliefs that shape how I understand conflict.
First: The person is not the problem; the problem is the problem.
I also have to ask where I may have misunderstood expectations, sought recognition too quickly, communicated poorly, or contributed to the strain. Independence does not exempt me from examining my own behaviour.
Second: Human relationships also have material dimensions.
Time, labour, access, information, care, loyalty, recognition, reputation, and power move through relationships. These exchanges do not make relationships cold or transactional.
But relationships become painful when such exchanges are hidden, unequal, or converted into debts that one person never agreed to carry.
I did not enter journalism because I wanted to stand close to power
I entered journalism because I kept noticing a gap: ordinary people spoke about problems that shaped their daily lives, but their voices often disappeared once the event was over.
A road was broken.
A family could not access a service.
A public facility was neglected.
A person waited outside an office with papers folded into a plastic cover.
There would be a complaint, a photograph, a quote — perhaps a short report.
Then the story would move on.
But the problem would remain.
During my Master’s in Journalism and Mass Communication, I began asking what happened after the report was published.
I was drawn to qualitative research because it slowed me down. It taught me to listen before forming conclusions. It showed me that people are not merely “cases,” “beneficiaries,” or sound bites. They carry memory, dignity, anger, uncertainty, and knowledge about their own lives.
The more I studied and observed, the more restless I became with journalism that arrived only for an event or stopped at reporting what happened.
I did not want to reduce journalism to cameras, press notes, garlands, speeches, and photographs of one person handing something to another.
I wanted to understand the system behind a problem: who was affected, who was responsible, what prevented action, and what could change.
That is why I began imagining a practice combining Constructive Journalism and Development Communication.
- Journalism can ask difficult questions. It can document what is ignored and make power visible.
- Development communication can bring people into dialogue, help communities understand their rights and options, and create bridges between citizens and institutions.
I wanted to work in that space.
I wanted public work that did not stop at reporting a problem but helped people and institutions sit across from one another and speak honestly.
I wanted to explore preventive health, community participation, awareness, screening, documentation, referrals, and local action.
Above all, I wanted to create a model in which citizens were not merely invited to attend an event but treated as people with knowledge, agency, and a right to be heard.
It was a big idea for someone still finding his ground.
But it felt honest.
Entering a world of access
At one point, I came into contact with a senior person from the world of civic-event reporting.
He had experience, relationships, and familiarity with the language of public life. He knew how to approach people, how to be present at events, how to maintain contacts, and how to move through spaces that can feel intimidating when one is still learning.
For a while, I respected that experience.
I learned that public work does not happen through ideas alone.
It also happens through timing, relationships, persistence, office corridors, unanswered calls, introductions, and the ability to return after being told to come back later.
Experience matters. I do not deny that.
I also do not deny the help I received at a stage when I needed orientation.
But over time, I began to understand something difficult:
Help can be real and still become a form of control.
At first, the change may not be obvious.
An idea you initiated is discussed as though it belongs to everyone except you.
A person you introduced becomes someone else’s “contact.”
- Your independent thinking is described as impatience.
- Your question becomes disrespect.
- Your attempt to do something directly is treated as a challenge to hierarchy.
- Your work is visible when it benefits someone above you but invisible when it establishes your own credibility.
Nothing may be said openly.
That is what makes the situation confusing.
You begin to doubt yourself.
You wonder whether you are being ungrateful.
You ask whether you are reading too much into things.
You try to remain respectful.
You explain.
You compromise.
And slowly, you realise that you are spending more energy protecting another person’s comfort than protecting your own work.
What mentorship should mean
I do not believe every difficult mentorship is abusive.
Not every disagreement is oppression.
Not every senior person who gives advice is a gatekeeper.
But mentorship carries power.
One person may have access to networks, platforms, officials, media spaces, funding opportunities, references, or community relationships that another person is still trying to understand.
That power can be used generously.
It can also create dependence.
A good mentor helps a person become less dependent over time.
A good mentor says:
Go ahead. Meet them directly. Learn the process. Build your own credibility.
A good mentor does not fear the learner’s growth.
A good mentor does not treat every opportunity as property.
And a good mentor does not expect gratitude to become permanent obedience.
I wanted a mentor, not someone who owned my work.
We are taught to respect seniors, remain grateful, avoid confrontation, and preserve relationships.
In many ways, these are good values.
But they become dangerous when gratitude is used to silence someone who is trying to grow.
A person can help you once and still have no right to control your future.
A person can guide you and still have no right to claim your ideas.
A person can introduce you to a space and still have no right to make you feel that you do not belong there without them.
Gratitude matters. But gratitude without boundaries can become a debt that never ends.
The Cost of Staying
There is another reason unhealthy mentorships can be difficult to leave:
We do not walk away only from a person.
We walk away from the time, hope, labour, access, and future we imagined through that relationship.
Once we have invested months of work, shared ideas, introduced contacts, and attached a project to someone’s support, it becomes tempting to keep trying to repair the arrangement, even when the arrangement is shrinking us.
Organisational psychologists describe a related phenomenon as escalation of commitment: continuing to invest in a course of action even after evidence suggests that it may no longer be working.
Past investment begins to feel like a reason to invest more.
We tell ourselves that one more conversation, one more compromise, or one more act of patience will restore what the relationship was supposed to be.
Gratitude can deepen that trap.
When someone has helped us, leaving an unhealthy pattern can feel like disloyalty. Appreciation for the past can become confused with consent to be controlled in the present.
But a past act of support cannot become a permanent claim over another person’s work, choices, or future.
Stepping back does not require erasing every good thing that came before.
It means allowing the next decision to be based on present conditions rather than sunk time, hope, or fear.
The question is no longer:
How much have I already invested?
It becomes:
What will this relationship make possible if I continue from here?
That question pushed me to look beyond the relationship itself and at the exchanges that shape public work.
The hidden economy of public work
Public-interest work has its own economy.
Not merely an economy of money, but of time, unpaid labour, access, information, reputation, visibility, recognition, influence, and opportunity.
There is nothing inherently wrong with these incentives.
Reading Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics gave me a useful way to think about behaviour: people rarely act from one motive alone.
- Financial incentives shape what we gain or lose materially.
- Social incentives shape how we are seen — our reputation, status, belonging, visibility, and influence.
- Moral incentives shape the story we tell ourselves about whether what we are doing is right, fair, or worthwhile.
In public-interest work, all three can exist at the same time. A person may genuinely want to serve a community while also valuing recognition, access, relationships, future opportunities, or financial sustainability.
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The problem is not that these incentives exist. The problem begins when they remain hidden, become entitlements, or are presented as pure service while someone else carries the labour or loses the credit.
A health camp may genuinely be about service while also producing visibility, photographs, institutional relationships, future funding opportunities, and public recognition.
A journalism project may genuinely be about accountability while also involving competition for bylines, access, professional relevance, and proximity to authority.
Trust can slowly become an unspoken transaction:
I helped you, therefore you owe me loyalty.
I introduced you, therefore your access belongs to me.
I have more experience, therefore you must remain junior.
That is not mentorship.
It is an economy of dependency.
The language of public service does not automatically make a relationship ethical.
- Someone can speak about welfare and still seek visibility.
- Someone can speak about mentorship and still be uncomfortable with another person’s independence.
- Someone can speak about community while behaving as though access to that community is private property.
The important question is not whether someone calls themselves a mentor, journalist, social worker, organiser, or civic actor.
The question is:
What does their behaviour make possible for others?
If access can function as a form of capital, the next question is who begins with more of it.
Caste, locality, and credit
I cannot know every motive operating within a particular relationship.
But mentorship, professional recognition, and access do not exist outside the social structures in which we live.
In India, merit is not judged in an empty room.
Caste, locality, language, class, education, family background, and social networks can shape who enters institutions confidently, who already understands their codes, who receives introductions, and whose credibility is assumed before their contribution is examined.
This does not mean every person with influence is dishonest.
Nor does it mean every professional conflict can be explained through caste.
It means simply that influence, familiarity, and opportunity are not distributed equally.
Imagine two people who are equally capable and equally willing to work.
One grows up inside a network where relatives, classmates, family friends, and community connections already reach into business, medicine, government, politics, education, or other institutions. Introductions happen naturally through families, schools, villages, associations, weddings, and professional circles.
The other person may have relationships that are just as strong and meaningful, but not the same concentration of connections to capital, institutions, and decision-making.
The difference is not simply who knows more people. It is who knows people positioned to open consequential doors.
Over generations, that difference can compound. Land can become education. Education can become professional access. Professional access can become institutional familiarity. Institutional familiarity can become networks. And networks can make the next opportunity easier to reach.
That does not mean every successful person inherited their success, nor does it mean people outside historically advantaged networks cannot build power of their own. It means that people do not always begin with the same distance to the door.
- One person may arrive with recognised networks and be treated as a leader before doing much visible work.
- Another may bring research, ideas, consistency, and responsibility yet continue to be seen as an assistant, volunteer, supporter, or “junior.”
Credit can travel upward while labour remains below.
This is where caste and social location become important, not necessarily as explanations for every individual motive, but as structures that can shape access, familiarity, confidence, networks, recognition, and the assumptions people make about who naturally belongs in rooms of authority.
Locality and social proximity can reinforce the same pattern.
Someone may already be “known” because they come from the expected place, know the expected people, speak the expected language, or have learned the codes through which authority recognises itself.
When this happens, merit risks becoming a slogan rather than a practice.
For me, merit should mean something concrete:
- Who did the research?
- Who developed the idea?
- Who took responsibility?
- Who continued working when no one was watching?
- Who built relationships with dignity?
- Who documented the process?
- Who respected the community?
- Who gave credit fairly?
- Who remained accountable when things became difficult?
Merit is not the loudest person in the room.
It is not the person standing closest to authority.
It is not the person who appears in every photograph.
For me, merit has to be grounded in contribution.
Building a different practice
I do not want this experience to make me cynical.
I do not want to distrust every senior person, institution, or partnership.
Public work cannot happen in isolation.
We need health workers, local leaders, volunteers, researchers, clinicians, community groups, government officers, journalists, and people who understand how systems function.
But collaboration needs structure.
For the kind of community-health work I want to build, that means written roles, transparent budgets, clear consent, documented expenses, referral pathways, shared credit, and more than one route to the community.
It means no single person should control all access.
It means the person who conceptualises and coordinates work should not disappear once the work becomes visible.
And it means communities should never become stages on which other people perform their importance.
A health camp should create real value: screening, awareness, dignity, privacy, referral, follow-up, and a better connection between people and systems of care.
A journalism project should do more than announce that something happened. It should help people understand why it happened, who is responsible, and what can be done.
A mentor should not create followers.
A mentor should create independent people who are capable of thinking, acting, and eventually guiding others with greater generosity.
A boundary, not a betrayal
It has taken me time to understand that setting a boundary is not betrayal.
- I can acknowledge help and still refuse to be controlled.
- I can respect experience without allowing experience to erase my contribution.
- I can learn from someone and still choose a different path.
- I can care about the public good without allowing my work to become somebody else’s image-building project.
- I can be grateful without becoming silent.
The person is not the problem; the problem is the pattern.
The pattern is mentorship that demands dependence.
- It is credit that follows hierarchy instead of contribution.
- It is access treated as property.
- It is public service reduced to performance.
- It is social structures influencing who is recognised as capable before their work is fairly examined.
I do not have all the answers. I am still learning how to build institutions, relationships, and public work without reproducing the very patterns I criticise.
But I know this much: I want mentorship— and public work— that makes people stronger, not smaller.
The stage belongs to everyone
“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare wrote.
The line remains powerful because public life is full of performance.
We play many parts: journalist, mentor, organiser, citizen, official, volunteer, expert, social worker, student, leader.
But the purpose of public work cannot simply be to occupy the stage.
The real test is whether our role creates room for others to stand there too.
The more useful question for me is what I build differently from here:
- Research-based journalism.
- Transparent collaboration.
- Community-led health work.
- Fair credit.
- Dialogue between people and institutions.
That work may be slower than performance.
It may be less glamorous than standing close to authority.
It may not always receive immediate applause.
But it is the work I believe in.
And it is work I intend to continue—
without surrendering my voice,
my authorship, and
my right to become independent.
