“You are years behind Gullu. He got his PhD last year and has become a professor in the government college.” My father has a knack for souring things early in the morning. The said Gullu, a dear acquaintance, is the latest stick daddy has found to beat his children with. This young man has suddenly acquired the Dr title and paid a hefty bribe to join the faculty of a government college. He has spent a lot of money for these educational and professional credentials that he really doesn’t need. He is wealthy, influential, and extremely personable. Most doors he cares about are open for him already. Why has he, then, bought this lie, I wonder.

Pierre Bourdieu once described education as the central mechanism through which cultural capital is transmitted and legitimised. When people fabricate, or buy, educational qualifications or inflate job titles, they are not merely telling personal lies. To lie about one’s degree is to engage in an act of mimicry within an economy of prestige.

The sociologist Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, conceptualised social interaction as a kind of performance. Most of us try day and night to........

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