India’s burgeoning middle class is a trope that appears in much recent discussion of the country’s economic rise. Variously estimated at between 100 million and 400 million, depending on how they are measured, they’re central to the story of contemporary India and their
ranks are indisputably increasing as the country’s economy grows.
But who are these people, and what values do they represent?
We know them as consumers powering India’s economic engine to the point where India’s growth has been largely unaffected by the recent global economic downturn. Any casual visitor to the many shopping malls that have sprung up across the nation has seen this buying power at work in shops and food courts that are packed day and night. These people have money, and they’re spending it. As incomes rise, spending patterns shift, with the new middle class spending a decreasing share of its budget on basic necessities such as food and clothing and an increasing share on consumer goods, health, education and, depending on their level of affluence, everything from scooters to automobiles.
Having bracketed the middle class as consumers, many analysts and even politicians point out their apathy and disengagement from the political process, citing low turnout rates during elections compared to the poor, who vote in large numbers.
But are things changing?
The recent saga of Baba Ramdev and his disrupted fast in New Delhi has revealed at least a portion of the same middle class as his principal support base. Finally, we’re getting a fascinating glimpse into the values and aspirations that animate at least some of this newly-risen bourgeoisie.
Amitabha Pande, a retired senior civil servant and astute observer of the Indian scene, described to me via e-mail Ramdev’s followers thus: “There is a whole new class coming out of the non-metro cities and towns who are increasingly assertive of their vernacular roots, see no reason to be ashamed of their lack of familiarity with English as spoken by the westernized city elite, are aggressive about their religiosity and the overt symbols of such religiosity…and find in the Baba the perfect representation of their cultural aspirations.”
This may provide a clue to explain the “class bias” that some commentators have hinted at in the reception that Ramdev and his followers have received. In this case the bias is a prejudice by the upper middle class who dominate discourse in New Delhi and Mumbai against the perceived lower middle class that Mr. Pande describes above. The upper middle classes seemed to find more truck with Anna Hazare, a product of the armed forces who, in his own protest a few months back, struck a more Gandhian, less religious tone.
News anchor Barkha Dutt asked her Twitter followers: “Why is Ramdev being opposed by so many others who supported Hazare? Differences of class, ideology or on substance? Seems inconsistent!”
Commentator Shiv Visvanthan, reflecting on the reaction of his urban friends to the saffron-clad swami, writes: “They are worried about his rustic populism which makes a hash of our more urbane secular categories. Others more liberal see him as comic book stuff.”
The discomfort presumably derives from the peculiarity of some of his assertions such as “curing” homosexuality through yogic breathing exercises, and his flamboyant persona, which combines elements of austerity and ostentation. This combination seems incongruous to the Anglicized urban elite, but is shared by many of the Baba’s vernacular middle-class followers, as indeed it is by social conservatives elsewhere such as America’s religious right. Further, thereligiosity of this new middle class, off-putting as it may be to the urban elite, is one of its defining features.
Like any newly risen social class throughout history, there is a lag between its economic rise and its political rise. The new middle class in India have been central to the economic story for the last 20 years, but have been largely a cipher politically. That may be about to change.
Some commentators see the Ramdev episode as a turning point in the political empowerment of this hitherto largely silent vernacular middle class. Chandan Mitra, journalist and politician, writes sympathetically: “But whatever happens, Middle India has served notice on the ruling elite: They can no longer be ignored or deprived of the opportunities their urban counterparts have grabbed for themselves over the last 64 years.”
If Mr. Mitra is correct and power is shifting to this new class, what economic policy ideas will members of this group bring to the table? Will they, for instance, bring forward some of Baba Ramdev’s autarchic proposals, such as a return to “Swadeshi” or “Buy Indian.” If taken literally, this would jeopardize India’s engagement with the global economy and paradoxically threaten the sources of power and prosperity of the middle class itself.
Baba Ramdev himself seems to epitomize the ambivalence that some in the middle class feel toward the global economy. His business and financial success owe a great deal to supporters abroad. As reported by Lydia Polgreen last year in the New York Times, the Ramdev “empire” now includes an island off the coast of Scotland and plans for a yoga and health center in the Houston suburbs. Obviously, none of this would have been possible without the outward looking economic policies that Ramdev publicly decries.
If Baba Ramdev or his supporters enter the political mainstream, they’ll need to decide where they stand on economic policy. And, of course, it’s dangerous to generalize about a group that may be as large as one third of the country’s population. While Baba Ramdev’s supporters are clearly drawn from this new middle class, they don’t necessarily comprise all of it. Surely, many among the middle class have understood the direct relationship between economic liberalization and their own personal rise. It’s also too early to tell if the Ramdev movement will fundamentally alter Indian politics or is just a flash in the pan.
But one thing is certain: a group, having found a voice, is unlikely to remain silent.
Rupa Subramanya Dehejia writes Economics Journal for India Real Time. You may follow her on Twitter @RupaSubramanya.
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