The Rise of India's New Middle Class: A Historical Perspective

Introduction The focus on the middle class in popular discourse is partly explained by the fact that its rise is considered the most striking feature of contemporary in India. This new, young and dynamic middle class has, according to scholars like Gurcharan Das, led to the biggest transformation in its (India s) history . His arguments suggest that the members of this new middle class are not midnight s children but children of a new dawn. It is argued that if the Indian economy is doing so well despite the political impediments to growth it is because of the young and huge middle class, which shot into prominence with the economic reforms ushered in the early 1990s.

Introduction (contd.) The size of the middle class has also changed our attitude towards the question of population, which is no longer seen as a liability but an asset. It has almost become a clich to talk about how the middle class enjoys power disproportionate to its size. It had always been powerful and, from the time of independence, has set the agenda for the nation. It has always dominated the institutions of the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the political class itself. Thus, the middle class itself has become so huge and so powerful that it is often possible to err and forget that there is a world that exists outside. For example, most electoral predictions going horribly wrong recently in both India as well as the USA (Donald Trump s coming to power in the last elections unexpectedly) bear ample testimony to this.

Introduction (contd.) The middle class, in terms of its avoiding the extremities, is seen as the most desirable social location. The rich, poor and the middle class are of course relative terms-if all the poor are lifted into the middle class, what would the middle class be the middle of?

Emergence of the Middle Class in India The middle class in India came into being with the felt need by the colonial rulers to create a native elite in its own image for the colonial administration of the country. Thus, the middle class did not emerge with industrialization as in England but with the need for colonial administrators. To quote Lord Macaulay in his Minute on Indian Education in 1835, We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect .

Emergence of the(contd.) Partha Chatterjee argues that the Indian middle class in the colonial context had a paradoxical position. The middle class was culturally invented through colonial English education, yet structurally limited as it lacked a basis for economic expansion in the context of colonial economic control. So, it was never a bourgeoisie as in the West. Hence, it was not a fundamental class in Chatterjee s opinion as it made no attempts at social transformation. In fact, the existing social structure mutated itself to constitute the new middle class.

Emergence of the(contd.) The requirement of English education for entry into the hallowed circle of the middle class meant that the upper-caste Indian with traditional access to education could exploit the opportunities and become the middle class. In the process, it acquired a class identity without losing its caste moorings.

Implications of an Upper-caste Becoming Middle Class The middle class that emerged in the Presidency towns in the colonial period was classical in its cultural preferences, both classical Sanskritic because of its Brahminical origins, and upper-class Western because of education. It had distaste for the popular and the folk in both the Indian and the English traditions. That is how indigenous, popular, cultural forms such as the nautanki and jatra acquired pejorative values, which continues even today. More significantly, the upper-caste location of the original Indian middle class led to the retention of their traditional roles in the social hierarchies, where the upper caste engaged itself with education and disengaged itself with any form of physical labour.

Implications of an(contd.) The failure to acknowledge this distinctiveness of the Indian middle class has been a major problem in city planning as well. The cities of India are very different from the cities of the West on which they are modeled. The cities are of course for the civilized people or, in other words, for the middle class. In modeling our cities on the West, we, however, forget that the urban middle class in the West does not depend on the kind of domestic help the middle class in India does. The urban poor are indispensable to the urban middle class in India. Yet, the city is never planned with the slum in mind and a slum always has an illegitimate birth.

Implications of an(contd.) In each city, therefore, there is also what the architect Jai Sen calls the unintended city , which the city cannot do without, and which, in cities like Bombay and Calcutta, houses the majority of the population.

Dominant Role of the Middle Class in the Political Domain Until the first two decades after independence, there was the political hegemony of a small upper-caste, English-educated elite. At the same time, the rule of the middle-class elite at the national level could not be typified with the rule of the upper castes. Even if the ruling elite had their origins in the upper castes, they had become detached from their traditional ritual functions. They had acquired new interests and lifestyles, which came through modern education, non-traditional occupations and a degree of Westernization in their thinking and lifestyle.

Both Upper-caste and Middle-class Identity The upper castes, reconstituted as middle class , could comfortably own both the upper-caste and middle- class identity. Even though they ceased to perform their ritual functions, their traditional high status helped them access modern education and professions and also to convert, when required, their inherited wealth into new means for acquiring elite positions of power. So their caste had fused with class and had acquired a power dimension. The modernized urban section of the upper castes functioned as a power group of elites.

Both Upper-caste(contd.) As this process of converting traditional status into new power was restricted to the upper castes, they sought to use that power to establish their own caste-like hegemony over the rest of the society. Even the Indian National Congress, which was set up in 1885, catered to upper-and middle-class interests. It is only with the political emergence of Gandhi in the 1920s that the Congress acquired a mass character for the first time. The nationalist movement involved the masses but the leadership remained with the dominant elite, the middle class.

Changes in Urban Life With the upper caste losing their ritual functions after their emergence as a middle class it paved the way for the progressive breakdown of the traditional caste system. This is because the nexus between hereditary ritual status and occupations constituted one of the defining features of the caste system. One chooses an occupation for its monetary and other benefits and not for its correlation with ritual purity. There are also other changes taking place in the caste system which need to be taken into consideration. Earlier, within a particular caste, the members were more or less equal in terms of their life style.

Changes in Urban Life (contd.) The little differences between households in terms of wealth and status were rarely expressed in terms of power. Today, members of a single caste are becoming increasingly differentiated among themselves in terms of their occupations, educational and income levels and lifestyles. With the increasing differentiation within a caste, people are increasingly marrying outside the sub- castes and often the caste as well. Earlier, in cohesive social groups, it was possible to find a partner from within one s social circle. However, with mobility into the middle class, one not only looks for a partner from the same caste but from the same social class as well.

Expansion of the Middle Class The middle class in the colonial period and the early years of independence was a fairly homogeneous group, urban centred with English education and mostly upper caste. This English-speaking, urban middle class continued to expand with increasing prosperity in the urban centres. However, the relatively homogeneous character of the middle class began to change with its expansion and with the emergence of new groups into the middle class.

The Rural Middle Class The defining urban-centredness of the middle class was lost with the emergence of an agrarian middle class on the heels of the Green Revolution, introduced from around the mid-1960s. These farmers, who constituted the new middle class, were relatively well off and they owned over 60 per cent of the total land area, though constituted only about 25 per cent of the total agrarian population. They were the numerous middle-level cultivationists, who had benefited the most from the Zamindari Abolition Act of 1955 and now benefited the most from the Green Revolution.

The Rural Middle Class (contd.) Unlike the very rich farmers, they farmed the land themselves and took good care to ensure maximum produce. Their landholdings were large enough to generate the capital for use of new technologies such as tractors and fertilizers. Since they had the political power, they also manipulated the policies to benefit them. With favourable government policies such as: i. subsidies in power, water, diesel and fertilizers ii. Relief from taxation and easy availability of credit and price supports for agricultural produce, their surplus increased.

The Rural Middle Class (contd.) This led to diversification within agriculture and many farmers also went into dairy and poultry farming and into ancillary industries such as flour mills, sugar cooperatives, transport business, trading, and brick kilns. The consequence was the birth of an agrarian middle class. The power of this new political class came to be seen in 1977 with the formation of non-Congress governments. Charan Singh became one of the leaders of this agrarian middle class which was opposed to what was perceived to be the pro-urban policies of the Congress. The confidence that came with the new-found political power also brought a desire for consumer goods earlier seen as unnecessary for poor farmers.

The Rural Middle Class (contd.) With increasing migration, both within the country and outside, from the villages, there slowly emerged a rural middle class fuelled by the remittances of migrants, which added to the already formed agrarian middle class. At the same time, the agrarian middle class was dominated by the upper caste and the middle castes. There was hardly an agrarian Dalit middle class for obvious reasons. Most Dalits were either landless or precariously marginal farmers. As a result of reservations, however, slowly a Dalit middle class emerged in the urban centres.

The Dalit Middle Class The Congress-dominated politics in the early decades after independence was through the political hegemony of the upper-caste-oriented middle class with the electoral support of consent of the lower castes. It was a peculiar caste-class situation where the upper castes functioned in politics with the self-identity of a class and the lower castes with the consciousness of their separate caste identities. Towards the end of the 1960s, despite tardy implementation, the affirmative policies ( for the lower castes and tribes) had created a small but significant section of individuals in lower caste groups, who, by acquiring modern education, had joined the middle class by entering the bureaucracy and other non- traditional occupations.

The Dalit Middle Class (contd.) The Congress party-dominated politics of social consensus, presided over by the hegemony of an upper-caste, English-educated elite, began to crumble. The elite at the top could not accommodate the ever- increasing claims and pressures from different sections of the lower castes for their share of power. Thus, the lower castes started mobilizing politically and used such advantages collectively for entry into the middle class. The members of the lower castes then started acquiring the self-consciousness of belonging to the middle class and it is characterized by new lifestyles (modern consumption patterns) and ownership of consumer goods/economic assets.

The Dalit Middle Class (contd.) Now members of different castes and communities, who have acquired modern education and have taken to non-traditional occupations and/or command higher income and political power, are entering the middle class. Individuals from different castes and communities, by entering this middle class, acquire not only economic interests and modern lifestyles but also a new self image and social identity as members of a middle class. When these sections of the Dalits, after entering the middle class continued to face discrimination and humiliation at the hands of the upper castes, they decided to fight for their respect and dignity.

The Dalit Middle Class (contd.) This political mobilization of the Scheduled Castes in North India, for instance, led to the formation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1984. The party was financed by the new Dalit middle class comprising mostly government servants who also took over the leadership of the party. Their argument was that humiliation and not economic deprivation was the main problem of the SCs and hence, greater political representation and not material advantage was the solution.

The Dalit Middle Class (contd.) The political mobilization among the lower castes had other consequences as well. It has been argued by Thomas Hansen in The Saffron Wave that this has been one of the major factors for the rise of Hindu nationalism, which articulated the anxieties of the Indian middle class in the wake of these developments. The fact that Hindu nationalism developed within a large and expanding middle class defied political commonsense, which sees a strong middle class as a prerequisite for a stable democracy in the postcolonial world.

The Middle Class and Democracy The middle class has been taken as the cornerstone of a stable democracy. Seymour Lipset had made an influential proposition in 1959 that the more economically developed the country, the more successful a democracy it is. With political attitudes conducive to democracy which are acquired through formal education the middle class emerges as the main pro-democratic force in Lipset s analysis and this class gains in size with socio- economic development. Aitzaz Ahsan, the Pakistani senator, argues that India had a strong middle class and a subordinated military, while Pakistan had a strong feudal class (also in the charge of the military)and a weak middle class at the time of Partition which explains the success of democracy in India and its failure in Pakistan.

The New Industrial Class The agrarian and the Dalit middle class lacked the pedigree and upbringing of the traditional middle class though they shared the money and goods. Increasingly, therefore, it is this money and consumption of goods that came to define the heterogeneous middle class. This middle-class consumer then came to be portrayed in public discourse as the primary beneficiary of new opportunities in the wake of liberalization. At the same time, policies of liberalization were changing fundamentally the character of a section of the middle class into that of a transnational global class.

Information Economy With liberalization, the services sector and the IT industry became the drivers of the economy. In the information economy, the main source of productivity lies in the accumulation of knowledge. The structural change in the information economy changes the labour market and there is a shift from manual labour to intellectual labour. In the information economy, human capital, and not physical capital, is the driver of growth unlike in the industrial economy. It was, therefore, the educated middle class in India, which is the cause and the effect of the boom in the Indian economy, indicated among other things by the irresistible rise of the Sensex.

The IT Industry and the IT Class With few links to the traditional sources of business entrepreneurship or capital in the form of the large industrial houses or business communities, most software companies have been founded by trained engineers of middle-class origins. The middle-class origins of many of the entrepreneurs, who have drawn on the cultural capital of their higher education and social capital derived from professional experience, have lent a distinctive culture and orientation to this industry. The entry of multinationals into IT has helped the industry grow and, therefore, the IT class is the most vociferous in supporting globalization.

The Software Industry and A New Transnational Capitalist Class The software industry has produced a new transnational capitalist class. With increasing mobility, Indian IT companies service global MNCs based all across the globe (25 per cent of Silicon Valley companies are funded or managed by Indians). Liberalization has created a sharp divide within the middle class, as segments of this group constitute the new rich in metropolitan India. The prosperous, urban, middle-class consumer is basically the young, urban professional working in MNCs and drawing handsome salaries.

The Software Industry(contd.) This new middle class working in MNCs is also a globalized middle class with consumption patterns typical of their counterparts and colleagues in the developed countries. Consumption so defines one that one s transnational identity as a consumer often takes precedence over one s identity as a citizen, which is territorially defined.

Middle-Class Apathy Just as the middle class has been celebrated for its consumption patterns, it has also been held to trenchant critique for its consumerist lifestyle. It has been accused of being indifferent to society in its obsession with consumption. The self-indulgence of the middle class is leading to a kind of insensitivity which makes it difficult to see the poverty lying around. Environmentalism has found many supporters from the middle class but middle-class values, particularly that of consumption, does not serve sustainable development at all.

Middle-Class Apathy (contd.) Reduction in carbon emission level requires lifestyle changes at the personal level for which the middle class is not prepared. Middle-class environmentalism is often directed at the consumption of the environment. The tribal populations are sought to be driven out from National Parks so that the wildlife is safe and thriving for its consumption by the middle class as tourists. The National Geographic and Discovery channels have also commodified this new environmentalism.

Concluding Observations The middle class environmentalism is often anti-poor as would be evident from the fact that the respectability of middle-class neighbourhood depends on its lack of proximity to slums which must be cleared up to maintain clean parks for morning walks. The green concerns of this middle class seldom match with its consumerist and extravagant lifestyles. The out dated, obscurantist, patriarchal attitudes of a substantial number of members of this class are also a serious concern for a healthy society. Besides, the fact that the communal ideology is getting a solid support from these sections is also a major worry. Nevertheless, progress and prosperity of society would largely depend on reshaping and strengthening of this middle.