The Indian Middle Classes: Number Games and Social Change - Surinder Jodhka скачать в хорошем качестве

The Indian Middle Classes: Number Games and Social Change - Surinder Jodhka

SASNET 2013 South Asia Symposium 24-04-2013 Professor Surinder Jodhka, Chair, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India & ICCR Guest Professor 2012/13 at Lund University , lectured on "The Indian Middle Classes: Number Games and Social Change". Abstract: The middle class is a modern category. It emerged in Western Europe with the rise of industrial society, accompanied by a free market economy, individualism and a new democratic politics during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Indian context, the British colonial state produced a middle-class for its own requirements. The British needed a class of native babus, Indians, educated in western-type institutions, for help in administering the subcontinent. Even during the post-independence period, the middle-class expanded directly under the patronage of the Indian state. The state recruited a large number of educated Indians for carrying out its policies of economic growth and its expanding spheres of governance. As in the colonial period, the class drew its power and influence through the mediating role it played between state and society in a variety of ways. India embarked upon the path of economic liberalization during early 1990s. Over the last two decades or so Indian economy has grown at a steady annual growth rate of 7 to 9 percent. However, unlike the previous two moments, most of the economic growth in the recent past has been in the private sector, in the "new" economy. Delineating this historical trajectory, Prof. Jodhka tries to assess the social and political implications of the rise and expansion of middle-class in India. The size of middle-class in India has been steadily growing. Depending upon the method of calculation, their number ranges from anywhere between 10 to 30 percent of the Indian populations. Though it may appear to be a rather small proportion of the total population, their absolute number would exceed many individual countries of the developed North. In other words, with the process of economic growth, social structure of India is also changing, from the one characterized by sharp contrast between a tiny elite and a large mass of poor, to the one with substantial middle classes. Apart from reducing poverty, growth of middle class also provides a stable market-base to a capitalist economy. Prof. Jodhka underlines the point that the "middle-class" in India has been a privileged space, occupied mostly by the historically advantaged sections of the Indian society. However, thanks the state policies of affirmative action, sections of historically disadvantaged categories of Indian population have also joined the ranks with middle class. While on the one hand this has increased diversity within the middle-class, on the other, it is has made Indian democracy more vibrant, giving voice of the margins. Diversities, vertical and horizontal, have always been a feature of the Indian middle-class, as indeed of the Indian society.