The Tired and Tiered Middle Class

Around 2007, the late economist Subir Gokarn wrote a landmark article in this paper titled, Middle Class Origins.

- RAMA BIJAPURKAR

Almost 20 years later, the postulates of that article are even more relevant — that the origins of the middle class, or the process by which they came to be middle class, mattered and must be factored into our understanding of the middle class and our assumptions of their behaviour and attitudes. That it would be incorrect to assume that India's future middle class will have the same characteristics as the (then) present middle class in terms of homogeneity and behaviour patterns in spending and saving (and, to extend his argument, world views on nation, politics, and societal duties).

The "contemporary" middle class, at the time, was the product of public sector employment — government jobs, both at higher and lower echelons, offering permanent employment, health care and pensions, low-interest loans (regular increments too, one may add) that gave security and predictability that shaped the behaviour and attitudes of the middle class. Since 1990, this as a source of employment has been decreasing, as data shows, and similar kinds of formal large private sector employment are not compensating. The most hit, Gokarn observed, are the lower echelon employees in public sector enterprises, where numbers are actual.