Nepali Times

Pity the South Asian middle class. Seemingly united in its quest for a better life, but almost always bitterly divided over politics. It is this inherently fractious nature that pulls the middle class in different directions, sometimes pitting it against popular movements.

In India, the fragmented nature of the middle class will inevitably turn sections of it against the Aam Aadmi Party, the party that won the Delhi Assembly elections. However, while the middle class may agree on the problems facing the country, it will never agree on their solutions.

Perhaps the problem arises from the method employed to categorise the middle class. India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) categorises a five-member household as middle class if it earns an annual income ranging from Rs 200,000 to Rs 100,000 at 2001-2002 prices. On the basis of these figures, there are about 70 million to 153 million middle class Indians.

So a household earning Rs 17,000 a month and another earning Rs 83,000 will not have the same views. The two will necessarily inhabit two different worlds. The neighbourhood they live in, the degree of influence they wield on the system, and the nature of problems they encounter in their daily lives will be different. This will foster varying perceptions about problems and their solutions.

Income aside, a middle class person in a moffusil town will perceive politics differently from his or her metropolitan counterpart. Caste or religious or linguistic identities also induce differences in political choices of two persons sharing the same class position. This isn’t to say that class as a category doesn’t exist in the Indian context, but to emphasise that the flawed definition of the Indian middle class based on income-range makes us view it as a monolith, united in its intent and action.

That the middle class isn’t a monolith can be seen from the sheer variety of its responses to the AAP government’s policies. For instance, the subsidy it offered on power and water has enthused those constituting the lower layers of the middle class, but alienated its upper segment. Partly, it is because this measure is in violation of the economic philosophy this segment espouses. But it might also be because it doesn’t stand to benefit from a subsidy that is linked to consumption.

Similarly, anecdotal evidence suggests the anti-corruption helpline has helped bolster support for AAP in the lower layers of the middle class. This group reels under the extortionist demands of petty officials and police to have their legitimate rights enforced without paying bribe.

But this measure has angered those who benefit from a venal system – yes, petty officials and constables who too constitute the lower layers of the middle class. It will, in the long-term, alienate the owners of, say, commercial establishments who bribe inspecting officials to have their flouting of laws condoned. Indeed, attempts to cleanse the system will eventually divide the middle class into beneficiaries and losers from anti-corruption measures.

Even more interesting a study is the schism in the upper segment of the middle class to the undeniable vigilantism of the AAP’s Delhi law minister Somnath Bharti. He led a mob that compelled the police to raid a house in which Ugandans lived and which was allegedly running a drug-and-prostitution ring. The mob surrounded a car of Ugandan women and pressured the police to have them undertake a medical test for substance abuse. The results were negative.

However, anecdotal accounts imply the culturally conservative section of the upper middle class segment dubs those opposing Bharti’s vigilantism as too westernised and accuses them of promoting a licentious lifestyle not in conformity with ‘Indian traditional values’. By contrast, the liberals in this segment accuse the AAP of tacitly endorsing patriarchy and implicitly imposing their notions of culture on Ugandans and others alike.

It is possible that the negative reportage in the Indian media about the AAP springs from the fact that journalists overwhelmingly belong to the upper middle class.

Nevertheless, as AAP grows wings, it will forage for other social bases for sustenance, through policy formulations that would splinter the middle class even further. But then, perhaps, we need to re-define the middle class to capture its heterogeneity in terms of both income and culture.

ashrafajaz3@gmail.com

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