India`s middle class must ponder over |
The great Indian middle class must now reconcile to the fact that `globalisation as we know it` is dead. This has been an uneasy week for the “great Indian middle class” — especially for those who think that history is full of lessons and irony. When the Soviet Union dissolved in the winter of 1991, a pronounced ideological shock wave ripped through India`s then incipient middle class. Their assured world of the mixed economy, the pre-eminence of government jobs, the commanding heights of the public sector and the boring world of Doordarshan news began to wobble.But after a few years of social and psychological disorientation, there was a surging return. By the late 1990s, the Indian middle class acquired a new story based on market-led growth, jobs for the asking in the private sector, the fresh youthful economic energies unleashed by digital technologies and, above all, the rise and rise of aspirational thinking. Children were not only expected to be financially better off than their parent`s generation but the outlook was going to be global rather than local. In all these changes, the United States and Americanism acquired the full force of a powerful winning imagination. The US, for the Indian middle class, beckoned not simply as a place to go to, but became the desired future itself.
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