In the summer of 2019, a 23-year-old student called Neeraj Kumar boarded a sleeper train from Delhi to the city of Patna in eastern India. A berth was beyond his means so he planned to sleep on the floor during the 16-hour journey. Discomfort didn’t bother him – he was on his way to the middle classes.

Kumar had grown up in a village a few hundred kilometres east of Patna. His family were poor, lower-caste farmers. The village school was so basic that children sat on fertiliser sacks instead of chairs. Kumar was a bright boy, and felt driven to make something better of his life. At first he dreamed of becoming a footballer, but then decided he wanted to be an engineer, like his older cousin.

In 2015 he won a place at a government-run engineering college in Rajasthan. Suddenly his life was transformed. Instead of mucking around in the dirt with the village boys he played games of badminton after class, and walked through the park at dusk with fellow students, discussing the latest films. He liked political cinema, stories which dramatised the injustices he felt as a lower-caste kid. The heroes of these films always seemed to defy the odds.