….Perhaps, the present plight of India’s vast middle class population is partly due to its inability to adapt itself to changing conditions. This class has been reluctant to abandon the cloak of super-respectability and to move with the times, in the realisation that work in the fields and factories is just as dignified as working at a desk……Another severe defect with the life of the middle classes is that they have been living beyond their means. A Madras survey, some time ago, revealed that sixty-one per cent of the middle class families in the city spent more than they earned and were perpetually in debt. If a similar survey were conducted in Bombay and other cities, where the cost of living is higher, the percentage of middle class families living beyond their means will be found to be even higher…….
Yet, the middle classes have always held a distinctly important place in society. It is the class from which our administrative and defence cadres are recruited. It is the class from which the majority of India’s freedom fighters sprung. It is the class which provides our clerks, our soldiers, our technicians, politicians and administrators. Is it right to let this section of society go out of existence?
The middle classes are highly literate. They are conscious of their rights and privileges. But they are also individualistic. They are not class-conscious and have not united as the labour classes have done…..In their present plight, the middle classes of India have become a danger not only to themselves but to society as well. For, a demoralised middle class is a corrupt middle class; and a corrupt middle class is a menace to sound administration. What we probably need is a major social revolution, but before it gets under way, in right earnest, something must be done to save the middle classes from extinction.
(EDIT, February 17, 1955.)
