If IIT students despite being intelligent don’t do well in their career, is it because of their past life karma or present life karma?

From: Amit

We see that not all IIT students do well in life in spite of having good ranks, say within 500. Is this because of their karma due to past lives? Or is it because they pick up bad habits like smoking, drinking, pornography etc? Does this mean that they lose their good karma by indulging in their bad habits and lose their sharp intelligence to do well in life?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
our control. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
In such situations, one understands that it is the result of one’s past karma playing into one’s present life. But even our present karma can play a significant role in determining our this life trajectory. The results that we get are a combination of our past life and present life activities.
Just like a farmer, when he wants crops, he has to get a proper blend of karma and daivam. The karma is plowing the land and sowing the seeds in proper time and daivam is that rains come at the right time. Only when karma and daivam come together, then he gets the crops.
So, sometimes, despite his best karma, he may not get the fruits because the rains don’t come on time. That means, in that case, his inability to succeed was because of his past life karma. But at other times, he may himself become irresponsible and not plow the land properly, not sow the seeds in time, and then he doesn’t get the fruits.
That is because of his this life karma. So, that means, our this life karma also contributes to our getting proper results in this life. So, destiny is not a static or a frozen box.
Even our present actions are contributing to our destiny and they are also contributing to the way in which our past karmic reactions are going to manifest in this life. So, that means, if a student doesn’t study properly and wastes his time in bad habits, then that student is, analogically speaking, not sowing the land and or plowing the field. No wonder he doesn’t get the follow of having a good career in his life.
So, it may not be that the intelligence gets lost, but it’s just that the capacity to utilize the intelligence gets lost. Intelligence is a resource, but even to use my resource, I need some basic amount of self-discipline, some basic level of control over my mind and senses. If I don’t have that, if I lose that, then talent alone is not enough to always transform into triumph.
Therefore, both courses are possible for the absence of outstanding career record