Pavan Varma, an author and former diplomat, and currently an adviser to the Chief minister of Bihar, has recently written an OP-ED article in Times of India (23rd November, 2013). Interestingly the article has made several points about the growth in importance of the middle classes in the Indian society and polity, which are almost the same or similar to those I made in my post “Rise of the middle India” (February 2013) appearing in this blog.
For instance, he notes, like us, the growing participation of the middle class in the massive public protests in the national capital on a number of issues, such as, miscarriage of justice (e.g. Jessica Lal murder case), corruption in public sphere (most notably during the Anna Hazare agitation), and more recently in a remarkable display of the public anger about the government’s insensitivity and callousness in respect of the Nirbhaya case which was symptomatic of a larger malaise. Clearly there has been a noticeable coalescence of public disaffectation with the way our democracy is being conducted. Varma, however, has not mentioned the three or four other factors (which we felt were equally important for the emergence of the middle class) like the stellar role of the news and the television media in communicating the true facts and vital details of the criminal and the corruption cases; government’s various acts of commission and omission and the people’s fights against this malfeasance through an effective use by the activists of the newly enacted RTI law; a proactive CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) which is Government’s own audit watchdog and the law courts, and last but not the least, the emergence of the social media.
Varma has noted quite correctly that the middle class has gradually come to acquire even a numerical significance, a sort of ‘critical mass’, that it had earlier lacked and in some broad sense has also a India-wide homogeneity in tastes and aspirations. And as we suggested in our own post, the political parties today might find it no longer expedient to ignore this class. We also believe that it would be better to describe the confluence of various social groups and economic categories, as underlined in Varma’s article in terms of a range of earnings, as the middle ‘classes’ rather than an abstract conceptual category such as ‘middle class’.
The point of departure in Varma’s article is the weaknesses he finds within this emerging ‘political class’ and the lacuna it has displayed in its disparate protests and agitation movements and its apparent lack of political vision to provide an alternative to the objectives of and the ways and means adopted by the two main political formations, Congress- and BJP-centered coalition of political parties. He talks about their organizational weakness, lack of pan India presence as an organized force and leadership, apparent inability to go beyond pointing fingers at the multitude of scams and follies indulged by main political parties and not coming out with strong alternative policy options on a national scale. Presumably, Varma does not think much of the newly launched Aam Admi Party and its imminent political initiation by fire in the upcoming elections for the New Delhi assembly early December, 2013.
Varma fears that in absence of a well-articulated set of policy blue prints of national scope and significance, wider coverage of issues other than just a principled stand on corruption, the middle classes and their newer political representatives might not appear as effective to the electorate and fair badly in the elections. On the other hand unscrupulous political parties might use the anger of the middle classes about mis-governance or the governance deficit (lack of goods and services and the economic development the governments are expected to deliver) and manipulate their emotion to their advantage by subsuming and co-opting sections of the middle classes and winning them over to their partisan and disastrous self-centered and sometimes autocratic or fascistic policies.
I think one can broadly agree with Varma’s reservations about the further and more important political role of the middle classes. It is true that while they (if you take the Aam Admi Party as representing them) now have waded into overt political action (like fighting elections) these representatives should probably avoid the simplistic reductionism entailing all economic, political, social issues facing the people of this country to the fountainhead of corruption. They must also make their position clear about the form of capitalist economic development model that the present ruling political parties are committed to and have a good support base among the elite and even sections of the middle classes. Many would argue that some of the major cases of corruption in high places arise out of the crony capitalism and because the kind of unregulated greed of a section of the impatient entrepreneurs is taken to be synonymous with the new aspirational ethos believed to be sweeping India during these past two decades. Since also much of India’s recent economic progress has come about after aligning the country gradually, probably inexorably, with the international trade policies (and quite a few dogmas), and relying on a sizable infusion of foreign capital and much of the domestic economic policies today have to be in consonance with the pulls and pushes generated at the behest of the big global power blocks (like US, European Union, etc) a clear-sighted foreign policy enunciation, that is neither subservient to these blocks nor totally isolationist like in the past, would be a prerequisite for a matured political formation that aspires to rule India. Coming months (or even years) will show if the middle classes have acquired that maturity.
