Introduction The focus on the middle class in

Transcript:Introduction The focus on the middle class in:
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 cliché 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. Introduction (contd.) 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. 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