The September issue of Prospect, out today, marks the 60th anniversary of Indian independence by asking an uncomfortable question of India’s new middle class—why is it so uninterested in politics and social justice? In our cover story, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad argues that aspects of India’s history and culture have helped shape a middle class—easiest the biggest in the world—that is largely apathetic about politics and the 300m Indians living in extreme poverty.
One reason for the introversion of India’s middle class, argues Ram-Prasad, arises from the great achievement of India: democracy. Whereas fighting for political representation was an important part of western middle-class experience in the 19th century, in India, political rights existed before the creation of a big middle class, and are now taken for granted by those who see their prosperity as entirely of their own making. In fact, India’s middle class, says Ram-Prasad, behaves in a similar manner to the apathetic consuming classes of today’s west, “concentrating on expanding its choice of lifestyles while taking political parties to be as bad as each other and non-party politics as hopelessly idealistic.”
Click here to read the article, and let us know what you think in the comments boxes.
Thanks for the interesting article describing the challenges facing the growing Indian middle class in the context of an often ineffective government and a lack of civic engagement. As the importance of India grows in all aspects of global culture, politics and economics, articles like this help non-Indians understand better the dynamics of this complex society. With the caveat that I have no first hand experience of the Indian experience, I don’t agree with all the prescriptions:
Indeed I think private, market solutions are generally more effective than government intervention; however these presume government that is robust and efficient with respect to building an appropriate framework within which private agents can work effectively.
An interesting article about middle class apathy. Of course university undergraduates in western countries are often accused of “apathy” by liberal journalists and academics who would like to see them taking extracurricular initiatives.
I worked with expatriate Indians in Africa many years ago and found them “detached” from the social problems of their country i.e. they never talked about Indian poverty, the caste system and the urban-rural divide. But at the same time some of my British colleagues in Africa didn’t talk about English social problems, except for cliche comments about inflation and house prices.
May I say that I’ve enjoyed watching DVD editions of a few recent serious Indian movies, that break the Bollywood escapist stereotype. Two that especially impressed were on the social impact of Partition, and a sensitively shot film about the ostracisation of young widows. Perhaps what the middle classes need in India is a cultural revolution - not of the crazy maoist kind - in the arts and social mores.
Gandhi tried for a nonviolent cultural revolution more than a campaign for political independence. But even he realised that the cultural side of his movement had not had sufficient impact. People failed in sufficient numbers to remove caste from their social minds.
Social detachment, caste and poverty in rural and urban society - these are traits in modern India that those socially concerned elements of the middle class continually need to tackle.
Though impressive in numbers the Indian middle class is outnumbered easily in a first past the post system. You can be involved only in a system where you have even a remote chance of being heard.It is this and not apathy that is responsible for the interpretation of middle class’ attitude. That they are concerned is seen by their passionate debates in the TV programs.
The landed gentry many of who come from the ‘backward classes’ have a significant role and increasingly decisive role in Indian political scene at all levels.Just see who are the beneficiaries of the large irrigation projects of the last 60 years and more importantly who have lost out.
http://searchingforlaugh.blogspot.com/2007/03/one-billion-people-yes-but-how-many.html
During several weeks during the cricket world cup, I often heard: “A billion people are praying for India’s success at world cup cricket.”
In the past, I may have let it pass. Not so this time. (Thankfully I have still not heard: Two billion eyes are watching cricket).
Neither my wife nor I were praying.
Since our maid- Sunita- who was borne in Pune district and has been living in Pune city since her marriage (much before she turned 18!)- is also part of that billion, I asked her if she prayed for such a cause.
Her response was startling: “Dajee, what is cricket?”
Sunita’s husband – an able bodied male- refuses to work. She has two kids. She has no electricity at home. Her kids attend private school because she thinks subsidized public schools are rotten and are bad influence on her children. With her meager income, Sunita looks after family of five including her old father-in-law. Her dwelling in nearby slum is registered in the name of her father-in-law. If he were to die, Sunita is not sure about her fate because her relations with husband are so soured that she refuses to sleep with him.
If at all Sunita prays, it is for longevity of her father-in-law.
I think we neo-rich and our media are just getting carried away. Let us remember that in this land there are still more Sunita’s than us.
I have in front of me a cartton of William O’Brian dated The New Yorker 14 Nov 1964. Its caption reads: “A hundred and nienty-one million people, yes. But how many human beings?”
Similarly I ask: “One billion people, yes. But how many human beings?”
http://searchingforlaugh.blogspot.com/2007/03/recurring-drone.html
For last several years, middle class Maharashtrian family functions tend to have following topics for discussion:
1. I or some-one-I-know is going to US to attend to a child birth
2. My or some-one-I-know’s son / daughter is coming to India from US/Europe/ Middle-east/ Far East on a vacation
3. I or some-one-I-know is buying a new car / house / plot of land..
4. Value of my or some-one-I-know’s real estate/ stocks has doubled in last 12 months.
5. Traffic jams / Restaurant food
6. One day Cricket
7. the latest Shah Rukh Khan / Amitabh Bachhan starrer / TV sitcom
8. salary of mine or some-one-I-know
9. practice of religion / horoscope, moon signs
10. sloganeering: “with pride I say I am an Indian / Hindu / Marathi / Brahmin / Maratha etc.”
Main enemy of India is her philosophy.Karmavipak system, which inhearted every Hindu`s mind. Every Hindu`s highest aim is Moksha.
So no one care for social responsibility. Even poor feel that their poverty is born from their missdeed of privious life.
All Hindu believe in this doctrine.so all Hindu depend on luck, they donot ashamed for doing missdeed.
One of the great thinker wrote long time ago that Hindu afraid sin but never afraid to disobey the law.
I subscribed to Prospect because it seemed to recognise a need to go beyond the modernist ritualism in which the old left drowned, and because it promised an intelligent and open-minded alternative to the cliquey autoproctology of the New Statesman. Your editorial and the lead article to which it refers are a sad disappointment:
1. ‘most citizens of the world can observe each other’s lives in real time’ – with a webcam in every hovel, no doubt.
2. ‘separated by many centuries in terms of economic and political development’ – decent education, the rule of law and respect for property rights will close those ‘many centuries’ in a generation or at most two, as seen in the Far East.
3. ‘impatience and revulsion in the developing world’ – actually envious resentment and perverse enthralment, mainly among the educated who feel threatened by change. Sound familiar?
4. Yes, it is arrogant to accuse the Indian middle class of being complacent and antisocial, particularly since the article paints a markedly different picture of strong community values and an alert awareness of how easily things can go wrong, qualities Europeans would do well to cultivate.
5. It is also outrageously smug to suggest that the pull-up-the-ladder nimbyism of today’s European bureaucratic oligarchies is a model to strive for, especially since India’s belated economic boom has come about precisely because it finally threw off the old LSE straightjacket and unleashed human potential for the first time.
6. What colonialism (partially) and the corporativist licence state (absolutely) held back was not the ‘middle class’ – there was and is an enormous clerical deadweight, as in Europe – but the emergence of a true entrepreneurial culture.
7. ‘less politically engaged and has a less developed sense of social obligation than its equivalents in many other parts of the world’ – such as? I cannot think of any part of the world where the private sector middle class is politically engaged and has a sense of social obligation, beyond paying the taxes levied by the public sector. As the article says, ‘why give to the state when the money will be wasted by corrupt politicians?’ Why indeed – the article has no answers, either for India or anywhere else.
8. ‘highly diverse societies, like India, find it hard to institutionalise fellow-feeling.’ So much for multiculturalism, then? Anyway, it is so old left to write about ‘institutionalising’ the finer human feelings. You can encourage them through education, example and reward, but we all know now that to bureaucratise is to smother.
9. Your argument about political representation and the emergence of the bourgeoisie is historically false to a truly astounding degree.
10. ‘Apathetic consuming classes’? Try raising their taxes too much or limiting their consumption and see how apathetic they are.
Thanks for a very interesting and topical article, one which expressed (far better than I could) some of the concerns I have since moving to the UAE where the Indian diaspora is much in evidence.
On the television, in the newspapers, even on the CD player in my local gym, I’m awash in sounds and images of the new Indian bourgeoisie. And its not an appealing sight, especially when - as your article points out - there are millions of Indians suffering daily. Nobody does vulgar consumerism or indifference to the fate of the less fortunate like India’s nouveau riche.
How can this happen? A country whose economy is apparently booming and yet child labour, public squalor and suicides from debt are accepted as a fact of life.
I agree with the article’s suggestion that religious and cultural factors are crucial and that a weak state is not coincidental.
And yet perhaps an answer lies within India itself. A return to Ghandian values of moderation and genuine respect for others would go some way to reducing poverty. And this would not preclude a leading role for the state, providing politicians follow Ghandi’s lead.
This article is one long mess of dangling survey results. It needs to spell out the tentative conclusions, which in my opinion are:
1. While mentioning the “curious success” of Christians, it fails to remark on the failure of modern Hinduism in instructing its followers in civic duty. Christianity, despite its fervent evangelism, “converts” a person from bottom up, starting with personal hygiene and leading up to community awareness. Hinduism has no civic agenda and as an organization is inferior to modern Christianity.
2. Both, Hinduism and Islam are egregiously at fault when it comes to women rights. Both religions have harmed women rather than emancipate fully 50% or more of India’s population. That fact alone is sufficient to doubt the certainties of these religions as an organizing principle.
3. Unlike Christianity, Hinduism is traditionally inward looking (KARMA) which is fatal to personal responsibility and the good it can achieve. I see no contradiction in the middle class insisting that their achievements are of their own making. Very often, families that broke from tradition were capable of assessing the situation better than those relying on traditional assurances. They are right in marginalizing the Indian government, which in my opinion should devolve more power to the states, because the local realities in India are nor universal in the countries borders. The article insists that it was India’s investment in higher education that gave rise to the middle class which is true from today’s purchasing power concentrated in the educated class. But the migration of back-office jobs to India because of labor costs in the West, was never anticipated by Indian leaders who set up these institutions of higher learning to drag India by its collar into the industrial age. Has the Indian investment in higher education paid off? The story is still in the making and the IT sector can not be taken as representative, especially since it is rooted in opportunism and not planned.
Aside from the above conclusions, one suggestion for moving ahead is to make financial credit possible to the poor. I am willing to bet that these people without higher education can ameliorate their social conditions. In fact, such a development will lay bare the fallacy of higher education as the ultimate enabler.
The article and the comments, particularly the ones which contradict the main piece, together do succeed in putting a slice of India under the lens.Like ever you can never get the whole of India in one picture!
A couple of points about the middle class political apathy:
1)Nehru took a very conscious decision to continue with the Administrative system of the British.What he missed out was that it was a system meticulously designed by an alien class to rule India, a system which was based on ‘distrust of the native’ and with no empathy for the ruled.It worked well for the colonial government and it has worked so for the Indian Government-shackles enterprise with multiple checks and balances and draines individual energies.Independent India needs to take cognisance of this basic reality and dismantle it.More to the point here those who have some how broken free of it, the middle class, cannot be expected to abide by it.
2)For reasons whatever they be the Indian middle class does not turn up in numbers befitting it at the hustling and instead chooses to crib and lament at the quality and integrity and competence of the elected.The simple fact is that those who are voting, the poor, the illiterate, the marginalised,the not so savvy are electing their kind of people while those abstaining are ruing at the absence of ‘people like us’.The former are pursuing agendas often antipathetic to the latter(more of positive discrimination for instance).The voting electorate mired in day to day grind does not minutely scrutinise the performance of its representatives even on issues of relevence to it-provisioning of healthcare,education, sanitation, drinking water etc because it feels empowered by just seeing one of its kind in the saddle.May be false conciousness but so be it.The have it all middle class agenda of rule of law, equality before law,probity in public life,performance based reward systems,infrastructural facilities(transport,power,telecom) is largely redundant in the immediate sense to the ‘bulk of the voters’.The clever politician knows which side of his bread is buttered but interestingly the same cannot be said of the ’smart’ middle class which provides market to levis you said!
The rich and the poor….time will tell the difference.
PS:The smartest of them all you guessed it right are the real rich, the industrialists and so on, they know how to make any system deliver including this one,so both the political class as well as the poor eat out of their hands and the middle class looks at them with what else but awe!
I am always a bit shocked when I see hegemony in action, but the Philosophers have a point, we have a lot less free-will than we like to tell ourselves.
Why is it that it is so acceptable regurgitate the formula state=bad entrepreneurs=good?
The empirical history of development across nations simply does not bear this out. India, China, Korea, Japan, the USA, the UK, the list goes on, all these countries saw a huge level of state intervention. That is before they gained enough economic strength to be able to remove their protective mechanisms for their developing industries.
At the same time countries that liberalize too much too soon, like Mexico, Argentina and swathes of Sub-Saharan Africa, tend to fall flat economically. Entrepreneurs on their own do not a global corporation make.
Point being that those who think that entrepreneurs are what develop a country are falling into one of the huge myths of our age, that of the free market solving all ills. The picture is far more complex than that, and the state is heavily involved whenever countries manage sustained growth.
Which is why the developments described in the article are so disturbing. India faces enormous challenges ahead. It has huge environmental problems in terms of food and water supply, and a massive impoverished population that cannot sustain the food price increases that are already setting in.
If there is little trust of the state, and a low rate of tax paying, what chance is there of addressing these problems? I believe in social activism, but mostly in terms of pressuring politicians to do the right thing. I have worked in development, and can vouch that the “social entrepreneurs” i.e. NGOs are no replacement for a functioning state structure. Local government in developing countries provides far more than NGOs, something which is abundantly clear on the ground in India.
What is shocking about the Indian middle classes is that they reflect our own irresponsible hegemony, the same hegemony that neglected flood defences in New Orleans, the same one that is leading us into chaos through refusing to rule, and the same one that ignores the importance of collective action via the state. Climate change is the issue that will show that this Emperor has no clothes on.
20 years ago, my father earned Rs. 5000 a month in Mumbai - out of which we used to pay Rs 2500 a month on a housing loan. My own choices as I entered graduation were stark - if I did not get at least 94% in my 12th, I would have to pay a “donation” in an engineering college, which my parents could ill afford. Jobs were hard to find. While not deprived, I dont think we gave very much time to thinking about helping others - if you cant help yourself - can you help others? We were fairly typical Indian middle class at the time.
Things have changed for me and for my family - we have been key beneficiaries of the economic boom in the 90’s. I (and a lot of my colleagues) are VERY socially aware of the social and economic situation of a majority of Indians. Most people I know donate to various charities and a substantial number go beyond that to actually participate directly in various organizations. I know of many colleagues who have quite just to work full time in social organiations - they can do that having achived a certain level of financial security. And we are still “middle class”, though what is more often called “upper middle class”. And yes, many of us, including ourselves, do indulge in “conspicuous consumption” - does one exclude the other? Would the poor be better off if this class did not spend? Do people in western countries not have parties when there are homeless next door? I have spent 7 years outside India mostly in Europe and US - I have no doubt that the average Indian has no less social awareness than people anywhere else.
But the vast majority of the “Indian Middle Class” is still largely composed of people at the stage we were 20 years ago, middle class as per someone’s definition of the term, but just barely keeping their heads above water. Do not think these are all working for IT companies! Do not picture an all-american middle class family with a house, two cars and a dog here! Think more of a rented one room kitchen hovel in Mumbai, just about making ends meet, and you will get a better picture. I find it hard to condemn them for focusing on their day-to-day problems.
Articles like this, with sweeping statements about 200 m people, do no favors to anyone.
This section of India is as much talked about as the economic boom. Naturally so, because it’s the middle class that is fueling the boom. The author says that the economic boom will have little meaning unless the middle class engages itself politically. But the author doesn’t clearly say how they can do it in a way different from how the middleclass engages now.
While there is lot of truth in what the author postulates, one must remember that politics as an institution in India is far from evolved, even though we have had 60 years of trouble-free democracy, stable government transitions etc. We have had good governments and ministers (who are good individually), but we haven’t had any good governance, especially at state and village levels, which matter the most.
If middle class in India has to participate in politics, and by extrapolation, I mean, in governance, there has to be decentralisation of governance, not in theory but in practice. Even this (panchayati raj, which former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi began) is a total failure.
If, for example, something as basic as road has to be repaired, a citizen (middleclass usually) doesn’t know whom to call up, if at all he or she is able to call up, there is no proper response, if at all someone responds, there is no clear guarantee that the problem is set right; and at the end of the whole process, the road is just not repaired, for days and months together. There is no accountability. This is because, development is linked to politics.
In the south Indian state of Kerala, the public works department minister is on his way out, and as a result the tarring of roads has come to standstill. Can one believe that! Look at how the state of road is linked to state minister. This is not the way it should be.
Glitzy malls are fine, but where is the road to get to the mall? Lots of colleges are fine, but where is the electricity to run them, and for children to sit and study. Malls are good to look at, and shop in them, but they themselves are no indicator of the citizens’ standard of living. It’s a huge myth. More malls don’t mean the society is more developed. The development indices are still the same: the basic amenities for citizens like food, shelter, clothing, transportation and other necessities that make one’s daily life comfortable.
Middleclass can involve themselves in societal development only if basic development activities are depoliticised. We need good road irrespective of the party in power. There can’t be politics in development issues.
What is needed is not more political involvement by middleclass, but more involvement in social reconstruction in a depoliticised environment. For that, first politicians will have to let go of their monopoly on development.
PS: This reply, has been cross posted on my blog.
I’ve heard it said (by an Indian friend) that India has only 2 million taxpayers, a figure I find hard to believe. Can anyone comment on this figure?
Looking back we must understand how political parties developed in the largest democracy in the world.It was first a sweeping vote of gratitude to the Congress party in the belief that nation will be built in a way that will ensure social and economic equality. It ended upin chaotic planning and utterly corrupt management of India inc. After all these decades of democratic process what has emerged is the clout of regional pockets of influence. The congress has split to splinters and so has the opposition to congress when it first emerged.India is not poor by any measure. If someone tourists saw the gold ornament outlets in Chennai or any small town in Kerala he will be baffled at the crowds these shops pull on a working day.The buyers mostly might be wives of corrupt officials or families of people in business who pay no tax of any kind and arrive in BMW’s.It is a pity that Cabinet positions are held by heads of regional parties and their cronies who are not known in any other part of the country. Democracy cannot function if political parties with no national representation join the government.It is true that there has been a lot of progress after liberalisatin took root and is trying to grow at a rather anemic pace.If the benefits should trickle down to the great mass of the country corrective measures are needed.If we take it for granted that we will make strides it might not happen.It is a sad fact that most state governments are bankrupt and the centre has never balanced its budget in ages. Our imports exceed exports by nearly 40% and most of the so called forex reserves are liabilities and not assets.We need serious efforts to correct the political system banish corruption and infuse a sense of nationalism that is sadly wanting.All south indians are madarasis even after 60 years and mumbai is claimed by mharashtrians who through a sena terrorise people of other regions.We have a long way to go before arriving at the Asian scene as formidable before claiming global renown.There are some shining examples of cross border acquisitions and knowledge and info-tech areas and these do not help the masses who struggle with identity issues within the country.
Why? Money
The Indian Political system is like the Old Boy network. An upper class presidium into which the new middle-classes themselves cannot enter, not yet anyhow. They will, when taxes and the usual ‘hit them where it hurts’ legislation kicks in. Ironically, it will probably be a green tax on India’s burgeoning carbon footprint that will spur them into action.
I find it hard to believe that someone could write an article that long without once mentioning the word “socialism”. It is only in the last decade that India started to move away from government ownership and intervention in the economy towards a free market. And it is only since the moves to the free market that the economy has improved at all. Despite those advances, with impressive, tangible results, the author would have us believe that increased government activity is the way to prosperity. And has managed to advocate a return to socialism, without, once again, even using the word.
Thank you for a very interesting and thought-provoking article. The character of the middle-class is such that creates a wide gulf between itself and the larger portion of the country. Secular, (not just tolerant), liberal, committed to economic improvement, and increasingly ‘nuclear-familied’, the middle class is in many ways starkly different to the Idea of India that is still championed publicly. It is possible that this sense of difference instills a sense of separateness in the middle class, and encourages its indifference. This is why I feel that India’s current aggressive economic growth will involve and motivate a larger portion of the middle class to shed their detachment. The apathy of the middle-class- a cliché but painfully real – may decrease if a sense of pride in their country can be brought back. After all, the middle class is also characterized by its sense of self-righteousness- It rarely takes actions that it can’t justify. Even ten years earlier, friends moving abroad justified their actions as “common sense to desert a sinking ship”. That is one metaphor that I don’t hear any more.