Sometime in 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance saw the Indian middle class turn on it. That year, anti-corruption protests ...
Sometime in 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance saw the Indian middle class turn on it. That year, anti-corruption protests in Delhi drew significant middle-class support, prompted by wall-to-wall media coverage. At around the same time, courts and the bureaucracy started to also attack the Union government on charges of corruption, citing two cases of massive, alleged scams – corruption in the allocation of telecom spectrum as well as coal blocks (even though neither eventually resulted in any United Progressive Alliance politicians being convicted).
The Indian middle class is tiny – but as this episode shows, it can also have influence far beyond its numbers.
So what is this influential demographic thinking about the current Union government?
Economic doldrums
Economically, India’s growth is worse off that it has even been during its seven decades as an independent country. For the first quarter of 2020-2021, the Indian gross domestic product contracted by a never-before-seen nearly 24%. And even that might be an understatement, with the shrinkage in the informal sector not being properly measured. Former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen projects that economic shrinkage could go up to 35%. For the past two decades, India appeared on the top of global GDP growth rankings – but not anymore.
The middle class were one...
