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Unit 14: Emergence of Middle Class System

• Income was not the criteria to define the middle class rather education, knowledge of English Notes
and high aspiration level were the important characteristic of middle class in India. They
played a very significant role in the modernization of our country. Today the optimistic
estimation states that in India, middle class constitute about sixty million households.
• After independence, the new political elite initiated the capitalist transformation of agriculture
through land reform and green revolution. Land reform conferred ownership right to twenty
million family in country side. Green revolution technology increased the productivity of
land. Such economic development in rural area motivated people to have higher aspirations.
Thus it created rural middle class. They are being mobilized by the politicians for the regional
interests. As a result of policy of protective discrimination and abolition of untouchability,
people from the Dalit caste groups could get education and employment in government jobs.
Now these people are forming a Dalit middle class.
• The emergence of the middle-class was facilitated by modern education and the consequent
work opportunities available in offices set-up for commercial, administrative and other
purposes by the colonial government. The conceptual and political boundaries of Indian
middle-class rested on mediation between the colonial rulers and colonial subjects. The
relationship was premised on subordination to colonial power but at the same time providing
cultural leadership to the indigenous people. In the post-colonial India, the middle-class
were identified as ‘Nehruvian civil service-oriented salariat, short on money but long on
institutional perks’. In the contemporary period, the ‘new’ middle class, as a social group, is
depicted as negotiating India’s new relationship with the global economy in both cultural
(socio symbolic practices of commodity consumption) and economic terms (the beneficiaries
of the material benefits of jobs and business in India’s new liberalised economy).
• The urban middle classes now more than one hundred million people reaped most of the
benefits of the liberalisation and modernisation programmes and began to envisage their
entry into the brave new world of computers, electronics. In addition, the new economic
policy also included deregulation and privatisation of the public sector. Economic reforms
are generating a 6-7 per cent annual economic growth rate. Material comforts have begun to
reach millions of homes for the first time in Indian history and the process is certain to
continue.
• India’s rapidly expanding economy has provided the basis for a fundamental change—the
emergence of what eminent journalist Suman Dubey calls a “new vanguard” increasingly
dictating India’s political and economic direction. This group is India’s new middle class—
mobile, driven, consumer-oriented, and, to some extent, forward-looking. Hard to define
precisely, it is not a single stratum of society, but straddles town and countryside, making its
voice heard everywhere. It encompasses prosperous farmers, white-collar workers, business
people, military personnel, and myriad others, all actively working toward a prosperous
life. Ownership of cars, televisions, and other consumer goods, reasonable earnings,
substantial savings, and educated children (often fluent in English) typify this diverse group.
Many have ties to kinsmen living abroad who have done very well.
• The growth of modern markets catering to the needs of the aggressive consumer fetish of the
middle class is displacing the traditional hawkers who were also a source of relatively
cheaper consumer items meeting, the immediate consumption needs of this class.
• If we see the emergence of the middle class in the rural areas. Several of the states in India
are witness to the emergence of an agro-mercantile class who have stakes in agriculture but
also sufficient economic presence in the nearest urban economy. Their social habits,
educational achievements/ aspirations and consumerism seem to be similar to their urban
counterparts.

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