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What is middle class really? This question can elicit many responses depending on who you ask. The FMCG marketer will say that this is the consumer segment that accounts for a large part of their target consumers; they have the money and are willing to spend. If you ask a sociologist, of the Weber and Durkheim school, they have their own definitions about middle class being a social class with its own set of values and beliefs. Eliza Dolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion defines middle-class morality as “I have to live for others and not for myself..”
India is a country with a population of 1,450 million who live in 302 million households; sure these figures will get fine tuned after the next census. Who is middle class? Can we define middle class by monthly household income? Or by possession of durables? Or by mental attitudes? And has the middle class been growing in India? The Economist defines middle class as a family earning between $3000 to $25,000.The Nov 23, 2024 issue says that the size of the middle class in China is shrinking though India is seen as a bright spot as far as growth of middle class is concerned.
I have serious concerns about these broad income definitions; annual income of Rs 2.5 lakh is not the same as annual income of ₹21 lakh. A recent YouGov-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey said that over 88 per cent of urban Indians described themselves as ‘middle-class’. Among those earning ₹50,000 per month, 90 per cent said they belonged to the middle-class; and among those earning ₹4 lakh a month too over 57 per cent said they were middle-class. So who is really middle class; even the middle class is not sure.
Who is middle class?
Let me throw a few more numbers at you. You saw that we have 300-plus million households in India. We all speak of middle class India wanting to own cars. How many households own cars? Just 7.5 per cent. When it comes to two wheelers the number jumps to 47 per cent. Refrigerators 38 per cent; TVs 87 per cent. Is a car owning household really middle class or should we call them affluent? Similarly is a TV owning household middle class or are some of them belonging to the poor class?
So it was with great degree of interest I picked up Middle Class India by Manisha Pande. Pande is an author, journalist and feature writer with three decades of experience. Her approach to looking at Indian Middle Class was a bit different from what I had read before.
For instance, one of the go-to books on middle class India is the one by Pavan K. Verma (The Great Indian Middle Class). Ms Pande feels that Mr Verma’s hypothesis that the Indian middle class was a creation of the British does not stand to scrutiny. As a part of her research she has dived into numerous books and articles including the one by Imtiaz Ahmad (Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe).
Pande clarifies early in the book that ‘middle class came to be defined in terms of economy, social status, power and moral values… Today the definition has expanded to incorporate additional parameters such as national / racial, cultural, religious identities and marginal groups between classes’.
The book presents the evolution of the Indian middle class from a historic, social perspective (not as much from a marketers point of view, I learnt). Pande’s premise is that we have always had a middle class in India. Our Varna system was a kind of classification and stratification of society.
Embracing English education
The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with middle class in pre-independent India. We did have a middle class and it was a class that embraced English education as a way of escaping the poverty trap. But the middle class was a very thin layer sandwiched between a small upper class and a hugely bulky lower class.
The second part of the book is about rise of middle class post-Independence to economic liberalisation. In this period we saw the rise of new educational institutions and this gave impetus to the rise of the middle class. But even during this period the middle class was thin. The third part of the book is about the rise of the middle class post liberalisation to the present. New economic policies opened up opportunities, jobs and the Indian market and the structure of the middle class started changing.
Through the course of the book Pande has kept an eye on the economic aspects and the social aspects of the rise of the middle class. She has also brought out the plight of women who seem to be under represented in the workforce.
The book also examines the unique complexities of the Indian society with its religious, class and caste hierarchies. The book poses questions around the barriers people from the lower strata of society face even in the 2024 India. One aspect that was missing was the growth of mobile, mobile internet, social media and the possible ramifications of those on the growth and aspirations of the Indian middle class.
For those who are interested in digging into the many shades that compose the Indian middle class this book is a very useful read.
(The reviewer is a marketing / branding veteran and a best selling author of 11 books)
Book Details
- Author: Manisha Pande
- Publised: Aleph Book Co,
- Pages 360
- Price: ₹650
Find the book here.
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Published on December 17, 2024
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