A middle class that roars

One of the interesting points that arose during the recent anti-corruption agitation was the apparent gap between the “middle class” and the “intelligentsia”. The latter said that the main supporters of Anna Hazare and his group were from the middle classes and proceeded to analyse the whole agitation from that perspective. The former, feeling they were being criticised, hit back at the intelligentsia, declaring that they were disconnected with the situation on the ground.

This is hardly a new debate; the bourgeoisie and the intellectual class have always been at odds. Pundits, philosophers and experts think of the middle classes as being too obsessed with mundane, material issues, while the latter see themselves as hard-working, honest people who want nothing more than safety, security and comfort for their families. The thinkers, they feel, think too much and look down upon the hopes and aspirations of the rest; they need to come down from their ivory tower perch and smell the coffee.
But there was a different edge to this age-old argument this time round. Earlier, the middle class was the silent majority (or minority, depending on how you looked at it), with no one to speak for them and no way to express their views. The professionals, government servants, small businessmen and salaried people were angry with the system but did not know how to express it. They felt frustrated and unwanted; their votes did not count for much and the political class was too busy wooing the poor and hobnobbing with the rich to notice. Between them, the four metros accounted for 25-odd Lok Sabha seats and there too the urban poor voted. The small towns and second-rung metros too did not add up to anything worth a politician’s attention.
But the middle class has changed over the decades. In the immediate post-Independence phase, the educated professionals were totally on board with the Nehruvian project — there was a commitment to rebuild the country; many scientists, scholars and academics who had studied abroad returned to join upcoming institutions. Not that there were no opponents to Nehru and his ideology, but there was no other political party to rival the Congress. The Leftists were vocal but their support came from workers, both urban and rural.
By the time Indira Gandhi appeared on the scene, a new generation had begun to grow up. The middle class now consisted of those working for the public sector and the government but also businessmen who had begun to get rich thanks to several schemes for the small-scale industry. At the same time the radical Left also sprung up and attracted middle and upper middle-class youth. Those who could, migrated for better educational prospects, convinced that India was a no-hoper.
A mutual antipathy developed between Indira Gandhi and the urban middle class. They felt she was too authoritarian and the Congress had lost its moorings; she did not care about them or their concerns and went over their heads to the poor, who backed her repeatedly. The intelligentsia — academics, think tankers etc — turned against her and towards other alternatives, from the Left to Jayaprakash Narayan.
After that, the growing educated classes — and the intelligentsia — moved away from the Congress for a long time. For a few brief years when Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister and opened up the economy (much before P.V. Narasimha Rao did), the middle class returned and gave him a handsome victory in the Lok Sabha. But soon the Congress found this constituency slipping away. They had discovered the BJP and the BJP loved them right back.
In the 2009 general elections, Manmohan Singh for the first time in 20 years brought them back to the Congress, but as we have seen, that love affair has proved short lived.
Intriguingly, as the middle class has grown rapidly — an estimated 31 million households — the intelligentsia has correspondingly grown more hostile. Part of this is explained by the general Left-liberal slant of intellectuals in India who tend to see this neo-affluent mass as driven by consumerism and narrow self-interest and little else. But it was the tone and tenor of the recent agitation, which was anti-politicians and as much as anti-politics, that has really widened the gap. Now the pundits are worried about the growing attachment of the middle classes to authoritarian ideals with little or no patience with the Constitution and democratic processes.
The middle class is not sitting back. For the first time, it has access to communication platforms to proclaim its own point of view. Apart from the new technology and social media, which is democratic and freely available, they found a champion in the mass media, television. At one time the media was largely sympathetic to or at least aware of the underdog; today it has crossed over almost totally to the side of the middle class. So while the pundits may analyse and scoff on panel discussions, the news coverage of channels and, to a lesser extent, newspapers, leans in the other direction; this is largely driven by commercial concerns of advertising and TRPs, but one could argue that there could be some level of empathy too.

The middle class has discovered its voice and the power of that voice. It is now bound to use it often. That is not necessarily such a bad thing as many may contend. But if it is used irresponsibly, without any sense of civic, social or political responsibility, it will turn into a force of destruction and nihilism. In many societies the bourgeoisie has played a constructive role of providing stability; not all its values are bad. Middle classes in the West participate in nation building, volunteerism and charity. There is no reason why that cannot happen here. How this facet develops in India will shape the country for many years to come. As for the intelligentsia, it too will have to recognise that India has changed from what it was even two decades ago. The demands of the honest citizen are valid and if the political class will not deliver, these demands will be articulated, occasionally in a strident way.