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BREAK POINT

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AURABH Mukherjea’s, co-founder and chief investment officer of Marcellus Investment Managers, latest book — Break Point: The Crisis of the Middle Class and the Future of Work — has sparked considerable debate for its stark assessment of the challenges confronting India’s middle class.

Coauthored with his colleagues, the book paints a sobering picture of the years ahead, warning of shrinking job opportunities, pressure on real incomes, and rising economic insecurity. In an interaction with Dipak Mondal, he explains why India’s middle class may be entering one of its most uncertain phases in recent decades. Excerpts:

You define the middle class as households earning between ₹5 lakh and ₹1 crore annually — a very wide range. How do you justify that definition?

As we explain in the book, traditional definitions typically place the middle class in the ₹5 lakh to ₹30 lakh range.

We believe the definition should meet two criteria. First, it should lie in the middle of the income distribution. Second, it should account for the majority of income earned in the country. Once we applied that second condition, it became clear the upper bound had to be extended to ₹1 crore. India has roughly three lakh super-rich families, and you need to go up to ₹1 crore to capture the segment that earns the bulk of national income.

You say education is no longer a fail-safe route to upward mobility. Does this require a rethink of traditional career paths?

Every major economy eventually reaches a point where its growth model runs its course and needs reinvention. We believe India’s post-1991 model is at that point. There are three specific stresses.