Society
The Great Indian
Middle Class
Sounds very much like the
Great Indian Rhino ! If such a comparison is attempted it will not be
entirely out of the world. Like the great Indian Rhino the Indian
middle class has a tough exterior but has a great inborn tendency
towards extinction. The middle class of yesteryears is already
extinct. Anyone who has recorded the middle class mass exodus to Uncle
Sam's land as part of the 'geek' generation will vouchsafe that. No
longer are our middle class homes inhabited by lungi-clad,
newspaper-reading not-so-ambitious salary-earners. The middle classes
have all but vanished; they have migrated to the new rich classes
having acquired the greenbacks which have given them enormous amount
of purchasing power. Of course not all the new rich owe their
prosperity to the American dollar. There is also a powerful new
generation of traders who have made it big without foreign money.
Whatever may be the source of the newly-acquired money power the
middle class is no longer of the same character as it was some years
ago. Understandably the value system too has undergone a rapid change
having lost some of the rigidity of the earlier values. The values are
now more individual-centric than family or community-centric. Coupled
with dilution in ethical values there is this dramatic reduction in
the obsession with the ritual. It is not that the middle classes have
become less religious or more materialistic. It is only that the
structural rigidity of the ritualistic behavior of the earlier
generation has slowly disappeared giving rise to 'nominalism' or a
token adherence. A case in point is the rituals still being followed
in marriages. These rituals are still a must for no parent would
countenance a son's marriage without the customary 'satphera'.
Not that people understand and appreciate the significance of the
elaborate ritual prescribed in the shastras. But people still feel
that the marriage is incomplete without the Panditji chanting those
sonorous mantras invoking the gods. Their faith in the ritual is not
one hundred percent but is merely an allowance for the tradition.
Religious faith has not dimmed however in these classes. If the number
of the new rich people visiting the Tirumala is any indication it
would appear that faith continues to flourish although the methods of
worship have also undergone enough changes with the passage of time.
Thus a devotee of yester-years would have spent six hours of arduous
wait to have a glimpse of the Lord. Today's new rich would not shrink
from spending a few thousand bucks as bribes to short-circuit the
queue. The middle classes who have graduated to the new rich have
evolved their own peculiar value system which enables them to marry
traditional faith with modern conveniences born out of newly acquired
prosperity.
Even in the matter of
pursuit of material prosperity the middle classes have evolved their
own peculiar value system which is a curious admixture of practical
morality appropriate to the times and traditional values sanctioned by
religion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the highly ambivalent
attitude of the typical middle class patriarch who thinks nothing of
paying a major part of the capitation fee for his son's engineering
seat in unaccounted money. The argument advanced is that this is the
way of the world and he cannot be a lone Ramachandra in a world driven
by the parallel economy. You will find the same gentleman feverishly
arguing in the second a.c. train compartment that the country has gone
to the dogs due to the evil of corruption which has eaten into the
vitals of the economy.
The attitude of the middle classes towards corruption is highly
ambivalent. One suspects that they talk from the moral high ground
whenever they themselves are victims of corruption in public places.
Their reluctance to bribe stems not out of altruism but out of their
perception of their own intellectual superiority. When it comes to
grabbing or cornering a few of the benefits they are not averse to
bribing themselves, a fact which they conveniently forget .As a matter
of fact in the initial phase of their ascent on the ladder of material
prosperity they had indulged in some palm-greasing themselves.
The peculiar ethic which they have evolved for themselves embraces a
perfectly elastic system with lots of emphasis on pragmatism. A few
moral transgressions are ok in this scheme of things but not those
which directly impact on other people's lives in an adverse manner.
The middle classes still manage to keep their basic morality intact.
That is why the seemingly prudish behavior of these people some times
when they themselves are known to have committed a few moral
transgressions.
In the traditional Indian society there has always been a confusion
between social morality and what the religion sanctions. The manu
smriti is nothing but a body of sociological tenets dividing the
social fabric on the basis of castes. We have seen how the caste
system has held sway for thousands of years .This has become possible
because although the manu smriti is a purely sociological
document a sort of religious sanction has been given to the caste
system which has been enunciated therein. Through centuries the Indian
society has been mixing up religion with ethics. Unlike in religions
like the Islam, Hinduism has been eclectic enough to incorporate in
itself the frequent changes in social morality taking place in the
wake of social upheavals. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
sociological behavior of the middle classes. In the constant confusion
that takes place between religion and ethics the middle classes have
through centuries been trying to reconcile changing social mores with
immutable religious tenets. The dilution of the ethical standards that
one witnesses in the evolution of the modern day middle classes is a
result of this confusion. What is very apparent is the technical
compliance of the social tenets that one sees more particularly in the
middle classes achieved through implementation of the 'letter' and not
the 'spirit' .
Lastly, the middle classes are of course becoming extinct. By the very
definition the middle classes are the middle-income groups who form
the commonest denomination in any civilized society. What we mean by
the disappearance of the middle classes is the slow vanishing of the
earlier middle-income groups. It is of course a truism to say that in
place of the fast disappearing old middle classes a new group of
people from the low-income groups will take their places. The only
difference would be in the speed with which the new middle classes
will graduate to the rich. Such a change may probably take place in
the next generation .
�
AJ Rao
August 19, 2002
