Diversity in unity: The making of the middle 'classes' of India

A Federal series on three decades of reforms

In this part of our ongoing series on reforms initiated by the Narasimha Rao government in 1991, we look at why the world failed to solve the riddle called the Indian middle class.

Diversity in unity: The making of the middle ‘classes’ of India

Uploaded 14 August, 2020

Alam Srinivas

In the past two decades, researchers were perplexed by an oddity. In several studies, the poor and low-income families categorized themselves as middle class. In one of them by NCAER, a think tank, and University of Maryland (US), “49% of the respondents identified themselves as middle class, despite the fact that the median household income for a typical family of four was Rs 5,000 a month”. Although the survey was conducted a decade ago, the earnings seemed too low.

One of the reasons for this trend was social stigma. Given the choice of being dubbed as poor, middle class or rich, the bulk of the low-income individuals opted for the middle class. The second one related to aspiration. In a 2014 survey by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, 60% were “optimistic about their future prospects”. They hoped – many believed – that their “material living conditions” would improve in the near future, and they would become a part of the consumption class.

While this showed that there was a common economic expectation to go up the prosperity ladder, it implied that this group could still be divided along the social fault lines. A poor village family may want more money and assets, but its needs may be dissimilar to an urban family. A graduate may not seek options that are the same as an MBA or engineer. Diversity of desires could also emerge from the fact that people belonged to various castes and socio-economic classes.

Slowly, but steadily, it dawned upon the experts that the middle class was “more of a socio-economic construct than a statistical category”. To understand this genre properly, one had to look at its economics – incomes, consumption patterns, and ownership of assets – along with the social mores, which depended on where its members came from. Thus, caste, class, ethnicity, religion, education, and occupation became crucial tools to deconstruct and dissect the Great Indian Middle Class.

Such insights, wrote Rama Bijapurkar in her book, We Are Like That Only, decimated “popular misconception… that there is a large, homogenous chunk of people at the heart of Consumer India… who have the bulk of India’s purchasing power and a great enthusiasm to consume”. This led to re-classifications of the middle class. In 2004, Easwaran Sridharan (University of Pennsylvania, US) was among the first ones to use the phrase “middle classes”, or middle class in the plural.

Although it is difficult to pinpoint all the distinctions between the various middle classes, a few examples will suffice. Let’s look at them from a caste perspective. People from the upper castes and traditional feudal aristocracy, and Dalits are unlikely to have similar mindsets. Brahmins from the south may not be the same as their counterparts from the north. In addition, there will be peculiarities between those who hail from the same caste and region, but live in villages or cities.

In their 2016 blog, two professors, Surinder S. Jodhka and Aseem Prakash, wrote, “Even when the rise of the middle class transforms the way people think, behave, and relate to each other, the process does not do away with inequalities of caste and community. Those trying to move up the new social and economic order use their available resources and networks, including those of caste and kinship, to stabilize and improve their positions in the emerging social order….”

Profession, or occupation, which is somewhat related to education, can be another prism to highlight the various hues of the middle class. Those employed with the government or public sector do not think like those who work for the private firms. Within the government too, the families that depend on the railways or defence forces show different traits. We tend to think of ‘IT India’, or those who have software jobs, as a composite whole. However, visits to the houses of the Indians who work in the US on H-1B visas indicate differing narratives.

Kishore Biyani, Founder, Future Group, and a pioneer in modern retail, divided India into three groups based on socio-economic dependencies. In his book, It Happened In India (2007), he dubbed them as India One (consuming class), India Two (serving class), and India Three (struggling class). Although India Two aspires to become India One, the latter never pays the former enough to reach those levels. Hence, the transition is slow; the pace is faster for India Three to join India Two.

Another way to reconstruct the middle class is through the changes in social ideology. Those who were born in the 1950s and 1960s were driven by idealism, a craving to build a grand post-Independence India. In the next two decades, greed, ambition, corruption, cynicism, and frustration influenced people. The 1990s saw the re-emergence of merit, along with confidence and hope. The characteristics merge across generations, but one expects older people to be conservative, the mid-level ones to be hoarders, and the younger lot to be spenders.

Despite these differences, the longing to redefine the middle class as one that mirrors the western democracies remained. In 2014, Pavan Varma, wrote a short sequel, New Indian Middle Class, an extension of his earlier majestic theory, Great Indian Middle Class. In the former, he propounded an imposing conclusion, “Gradually, the salad bowl of India has transformed into a melting pot, and with that it has given to the middle class the homogeneity of a class rather than a collation of castes.”

Varma claimed that while caste loyalties remained, there was a huge group that wore the same clothes, watched the same movies, read the same newspapers, competed for the same jobs, ate the same food, had the same education, wanted the same goods, and spoke the same language(s). Most of them were young. “The overwhelming percentage of the middle class is around twenty five (years), with the largest percentile between the age of eighteen and twenty five,” he wrote.

There is no doubt that this group exists. In fact, it started its journey during the Colonial Empire, rose steadily during the first four decades of Independence, and took off at a steeper trajectory since 1991. However, its growth and ability to consume is restricted. It may be able to break out of the social hierarchies, and join the growing group of ‘People Like Us (PLU)’, but it is constrained by ingrained economic realities. It will take years for the ‘New Indian Middle Class’ to mature.

First, wealth is unequally distributed in a capitalist economy. This is especially so in India. In its 2018 report, The Elephant In The Room, the Economist said that the potential middle class, which earned more than the median salary but less than the top 10%, lagged behind in terms of wealth. “Since 1980, it has captured just 23% of incremental GDP, roughly half what would be expected in more egalitarian societies,” the piece said. The figure for China for the same period was 43%.

Second, the people in this homogenous group may still have separate priorities based on their socio-economic backgrounds. Those who have just joined it may wish to clear off family debts initially, marry off their siblings, buy a property, and then seek to spend on other goods. Third, social values and norms may continue to dictate their decisions. Finally, they may only seem to be the same.

They may wear the same clothes, but they may buy it either at a street joint or branded outlet. They may watch the same movie but watch it at a single theatre or multiplex. They may read newspapers but with varying editorial positions. They may compete for the same jobs, but their salaries may have huge variations. They may get the same education but one may go to a government school and the other to a private one. They may eat the same food either at a dhaba or McDonald’s.