Conservative and derided Indian Middle Class?

The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class. Could the Great Indian Middle Class be the Great Indian Mythical Class? A persistent source of confusion surrounding the term "middle class" derives predominantly from there being no set criteria for such a definition. From an economic perspective, for example, members of the middle class do not necessarily fall in the middle of a society's income distribution. Instead, middle class salaries tend to be determined by middle class occupations, which in turn are attained by means of middle class values. Thus, individuals who might fall in the middle ground on a societal hierarchy as defined by sociologists do not necessarily fall into a middle ground on an economic hierarchy as defined by economists. As a result, intuitive colloquial and journalistic usage of the term casts a wide net and does not necessarily coincide with an academic sociological or economic definition. National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has held that a family with an annual income between Rs 3.4 lakhs and Rs 17 lakhs (at 2009-10 price levels) falls in the ‘middle-class’ category. Applying this arithmetic, NCAER hold that the middle-class households would be 53.3 million (267 million people). This unwieldy definition base puts the statistics to ridicule. The same way, Planning Commission calculated poverty as per day spending equivalent to Rs 32/- in urban and Rs 26/- in rural area. The absurd methodology adopted by these bodies to calculate the basic statistics is to arrive at a high figure in the case of ‘middle-class’ and a lower figure at the Poor category of the Population. Growth rate has never been able to reduce the unemployment rate which stood at 9.4%(2009-10) while average quarterly growth rate has been averaging around 7.45 % between 2000-11, even though in Q3 of 2003, the growth was 11.8%, Q3 of 2002 was 1.6%. Rob Peter to pay Paul. This seems to be the economic philosophy of the Government. In spite of persistent, consistent, aimless designed social security programmes with outlay of Rs 1 lakh Crores end up incomplete with neither the physical nor the monetary targets accomplished. The Policy editors have narcissist temperament, deceptive assumptions and outrageous greed. Against laudable objectives with which the Scheme was ambitionally lodged the Result is dismal emptiness, creating an un-necessary class war. The Poor continues to be poor, and the generation gap sees another poor taking over from his ancestor (Munishi Premchand’s famous story), when our well worked Planning Economics take us half way to zero, mathematics no longer work! Horizontal organizing, democratic decision making challenges, technocratic governance driven by credentialed experts, takes Indian economy to the dark jungle economy of wealth for none! The term “middle-class” is a classical example of a semantic plot! It is a widely misused term. People of the ‘cattle class’, legacy of the Victorian era, is it not linguistic outrage? The rich are busy counting their cashes. The Poor, darling of the political class, social scientists and so called intelligentsia, while, the ‘middle-class’ forlorn and uncared is without a Patron or a God-father but increasingly, the Finance Minister wants him to buckle his shoes by making him pay dear and dearer. His salary is cut in the mode of Tax deducted at source, service tax clamped while Government is pretending to be lax in collecting taxes from their favourite Corporate who enjoy plethora of tax concessions and benefits and in case of trouble can approach the ‘settlement commission’ The income earned by the Cricket Board which vulgarly displays wealth is exempt from taxes. What public purpose they serve, only the North Block die- herds know. Tap funds from these people who figure in Forbes list, increase the tax slab for the high rich, those who build houses worth Crores Float high interest Government bonds and compulsorily make these corporate houses to purchase them, so that the additional income earned can be used for reducing fiscal deficit. World Bank has pointed out that Indian Government is very liberal with low taxation base at the higher income slab- only some 15-16% of the GDP is collected as direct taxes, mostly they are the ‘middle class’ who can be meddled in any way to shell out, as compared to 25-40% in developed countries, enough taxes from the taxable lot. But the Corporate rich, who play the victim card, say that the jealous Indian Middle mentality in them feel that they want to take somebody else’s ‘Cadillac’ for nothing! In India, the middle class is a neglected constituency. Hike, hike, hike in the domestic interest rate on a regular level, while allowing the Corporates the luxury of availing Credit from External markets at low rates, increasing the prices of petrol incessantly, not because of high crude world prices but for making the Public sector navaratna bulge their profits, tinkering with indirect taxes, and reducing the taxable portion of income from the Corporates while hiking the rate for the middle-class. The population share of the rich is shrinking, the Poor is shrinking but the middle-class is growing. This augurs well for the prophets of high, higher, highest growth in the Indian Economy.