The middle class dilemma

I am sitting inside one of the jam-packed buses in New Delhi (The adjective is anyways inherent: Empty buses don’t exist in India). The bus is crawling its way through the ubiquitous traffic, halting every now and then, to accommodate more passengers, who somehow manage to make their way through the crowd, amidst curses and abuses, and soon become a part of the crowd themselves. The bus stops again; this time, thanks to the glowing red traffic light (These are the moments when I feel Mr. Sreedharan should be conferred the Bharat Ratna). I look outside the window, simply because there are a very few things I can do right now. I can see a family of four (Husband, Wife and 2 Kids – The Perfect advertisement for India’s family planning programme), balancing themselves on a Hero Honda Splendor (which makes me think whether my Boss, Mr. Tata, got the idea of a Rs. 1 Lakh family car at some traffic signal itself?), a couple with the guy showing off his Palika Bazaar sunglasses and the girl hiding her face from the dusty, polluted Delhi air (She has beautiful eyes though), Hawkers roaming around randomly selling magazines, flowers, toys and similar stuff, hoping to make some hay while the signal shines. And now, I see a few destitute kids knocking the windows of a shining new Honda City. I look further- 2 hunks and 2 chicks occupy the car, who seem least bothered by what’s happening outside the boundaries of their air-conditioned vehicle. Now, that’s not an unusual sight in India. Yet, it sends a chill down my spine right now. A set of contradictory thoughts overtakes my mind - I feel jealous and content at the same time. I wish to curse my fate for making me witness to the luxury and comfort I want to enjoy, but I don’t own; Instead, I murmur a silent prayer thanking the Almighty for giving me a happier, safer and brighter childhood than the one in front of my eyes right now. While I sulk at not being amongst the luckiest, I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that I am not amongst the unluckiest ones either; For I, lie somewhere in between, trying to leap my way to greater heights, maintaining my distance from the ones, who lie a shade below me; For I belong to the fraternity that calls itself the Indian Middle Class.


Yes, the Indian Middle Class: The not-so-thin layer lying between the poor and the rich, which includes the normal 9-to-5 office going junta and small businessmen (and their immediate families). These are the people who have a home, perhaps one of those little family cars as well; Just that they pay an EMI to maintain the ownership of these entities. These are the people who can afford to be extravagant once-in-a-while, which invariably means the beginning of the month, when most of them receive their limited salaries. We are the people, who lead a plain, simple and calculated life, where we have to plan every new event just to ensure the calculations don’t go awry.


Of course, there is always a way out. And nobody prevents you from exploring them. But, growth is always accompanied by pain, with a certain amount of risk associated with it. And that’s where we fail. While the rich has enough to invest some part of it into risky ventures and the poor can play fearlessly with a nothing to lose attitude, the middle layer wants to play safe and hold on dearly to whatever it has and that’s what makes them a stagnant set of people. We tend to follow the tried and tested paths, not because they are the most rewarding ones, but for the fact that they usually do not lead to failure. The mind of a middle-class child is shaped and nurtured in such a way that he/she rarely looks beyond the obvious and joins the same rat race that his/her previous or immediate generations had followed. A middle-class Indian is expected to study hard, work harder and make his/her way up the financial ladder, following the educational model. National level entrance Examinations to prestigious courses and institutes are the ways suggested by our parents to grow in our lives; that may be a safe route, but the starry-eyed may not be satisfied by the return on investment and the growth rate. The corruption that exists at the lower and middle levels of management in the service industry is a consequence of dissatisfied individuals and unfulfilled dreams. To satisfy his/her own ego, the middle class Indian has defined sub-layers within the layer, namely the Upper middle class and Lower middle class, but that can’t hide the fact that the group, as a whole, hardly progresses financially in one’s lifetime.


Please note that I have no complaints against the system as such. Not everyone can be a billionaire and I completely understand that. But I would like to question the thought process of an average middle-class Indian. Why aren’t his /her children allowed to dream and follow their own destinies? Very few middle-class parents encourage their children to take up sport or entrepreneurship, despite the fact that some of the richest, respected and most successful people in India belong to the two mentioned domains. One may argue that for every Ambani or Tendulkar, there are hundreds of unsuccessful stories as well, which most of us don’t even know about. But why should we be so negative? Instead of looking at the failures, should we not look at the success stories that serve as an inspiration to one and all? As kids, when we made our progression from being crawling infants to toddlers, we would have fallen more than once. But, that didn’t stop us from trying again, did it? So, what stops us now? Thankfully, such questions are being asked these days. The surge in the number of young entrepreneurs in the recent past, coincided by the emergence of sportsmen from the smaller towns of India (and I am not just referring to Cricket here) reflects a slow, but evident change in the mindset of Youngistaan. Hopefully, the change is here to stay.


The bus has reached its destination, but I haven’t. In a few moments from now, I shall join another crowd, rubbing shoulders with the pedestrians, avoiding the honking cars and passing the odd beggar on the street. The journey of life continues. The question is: How am I going to complete the voyage? Will it be the creaky bus? Or will it be the dream car I mention in everyone’s slam book? For the time being, let the walk begin.