What does it mean to be “middle class” in India today?
One or two generations ago, that is, in the 70s or 80s, there were no cell phones and no internet, and most certainly no AI, and so life was palpably different.
At that time, middle class meant “not poor,” and its membership comprised those urban families whose men were occupied in small business or white-collar jobs, and whose womenfolk either were housewives, schoolteachers, or office stenos.
And all middle-class people were proud of their cultural values, usually with a strong religious base.
How different is it today? Here are six differences from my observation:
The omnipresent migrant
Migration at work has become common today. Formerly it used to be only “blue-collar workers” (physical labor) who would be itinerant, but today many millions of us work in a place not native to us.
Perhaps it started with the craze for “going to the Gulf” (expat workers in the Persian Gulf), where even ordinary workers commanded hefty salaries (unlike most Indians), and could buy foreign appliances inaccessible to the average Indian family.
Certainly, more and more workers from the Northeast and the Hindi belt seek employment in South India where working conditions and wages are better.
What this has meant in fact is that the country as a whole is experiencing a “churning,” a cosmopolitan shaking up, and that homogeneous, caste-bound communities are more and more a thing of the past.
Language skills
In the process, spoken English has become better. Colloquialisms are used, mainly from the West, mediated largely through TV and the internet, while the “Indianness” of our accents and sentence constructions has reduced.
Still, there will always be a place for peculiar expressions, like “preponed” (anticipated), “intimated” (informed), and “intended” (future spouse).
Written English, never very prolific earlier, has come into its own. Notice the large number of literary festivals and publishing houses catering to writers and readers alike, in English and in that language alone.
Women at work
There are more middle-class women working outside their homes, and this definitely is a sign of progress.
I have been working in the city for at least 30 years, but in that time had never encountered a working woman — apart from the bai (domestic help) — in an office or factory, ever.
Today most offices have more women than men. While this may often be unusual, it is hardly exceptional.
Yes, the city is full of women at work — schoolteachers and college lecturers, journalists and writers, clerks, secretaries, nurses, and assistants as well as highly placed doctors, lawyers, and researchers.
The feminist wave shows no signs of ebbing, and yet discrimination with regard to salary, and sexual harassment has not diminished either.
What about caste?
Caste is less important, less understood, less felt, and in recession faster than it’s ever been. The great sociologist M. N. Srinivas used to say that what finished off the caste system was the obsolescence of the barter system and the introduction of currency. Perhaps.
I like to think that public education came a close second. And by this, I don’t mean “going to school” — always an uncomfortable proposition for children of any age — but the spread of television which brought the world into one’s home.
And even more the smartphone, which further compressed the world, duniya mutthi mein (the world in your fist) for the unlettered.
Proud of being Hindu
In the West, the middle class became gradually secularised and an “empty church” is commonplace in Europe. In India, the middle class has become even more religious, even if that “religion” has dubious value.
Perhaps it’s the result of the success of the Ram-mandir movement (the drive to build a temple on the exact spot of the Hindu god Ram’s birthplace), perhaps it’s the resurgence of political Hinduism (Hindutva), but the new awareness of “being Hindu” has given the middle class a sense of identity and pride.
Unfortunately, this pride often shows itself in hatred and discrimination against minorities.
An economic definition
If “middle class” is essentially an economic definition, many things have changed.
All of us remember the time when we acquired our first TV set, our first fridge, and our first telephone. Ration cards, a sign not just of subsidized food grains (“fair price shops”) but also of domicile and address, have practically disappeared. Today’s generation lives with its PAN (permanent account number), Aadhaar (a national registration system), and passport.
This tells us that belonging to the middle class is not a static but a flexible concept, for fridges have given way to microwaves and gas rinks, telephones to smartphones and I-pads, and the internet has taken total control.
Restaurants are visited with a frequency that would have bankrupted our parents, and vacations abroad, once a privilege of the elite, are increasingly common.
But many things, sadly, have not changed. Indian servants are still treated in a feudal way, which would be unacceptable in any civilized society.
So, is Indian society no longer “poor” and on the way to acquiring “middle-class” characteristics? One thing we can be sure of is that social change comes with many parameters, and is not measured by a single definition, not even an economic one.
While economic improvement is certainly cause for satisfaction, the history of this country is too complex to yield to simplistic answers.
source : uca news