Who represents the middle class in India? - Foundation Office India
Event Reports
The workshop brought together ten renowned scholars and experts to analyse the higher-consuming class in India’s emerging economy on the basis of a study paper on “The Middle Class in Emerging Economies” conducted by Professor Surinder S. Jodhka, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Aseem Prakash, Former Senior Fellow, Institute of Human Development, New Delhi.
With this study and workshop the KAS aims at contributing to a better understanding of the impact and the role the middle class plays in shaping especially the legal, political and socio-economic environment in India. The middle class – in its most general definition those – are neither the richest nor the poorest in society.
On of the starting points for this study was the fact that most emerging economies have managed to resist the global financial and economic crisis more successfully than many other countries, especially from the OECD world. Recovery in the emerging markets (EM) has been relatively fast and economic growth is expected to be strong in the majority of these countries.
The regained importance of the G20 forum as well as the IMF organization was to a large extent also driven by the success of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) countries, underlining the necessity to include the emerging economies in the processes of problem-solving for global policy challenges.
Among other factors it is domestic demand in the EMs that has risen considerably and laid the ground for global recovery. This demand is based on an expanding purchasing power. The middle class is at the centre of this development in the EMs. Especially the members of this class are subjects and objects of the described power shift.
The insights gained in the workshop will be included in the study. A publication of the study is planned for later this year.
