Ironically, it was the same aspirant middle class with materialistic ambitions that had welcomed Dr Singh in 1991, but grew tired of him by 2014.
In the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, there was considerable media commentary about Narendra Modi emerging as an icon of the middle class.
This class was epitomised by the young, tech-savvy, professional with a stable income who primarily hailed from urban or ‘rurban’ areas; the IT professionals and the NRI community.
Modi understood this constituency well, and began to sell them the dream of shopping malls and Inox, water parks and cruises, the American style and standard of life, hi-tech corporate culture, stock market boom, and the world view of management institutes.
He hated policies aimed at “pampering the poor”. The very existence of poverty was a Congress construct and needed to be buried deep. His argument was that the Congress created and nurtured poverty, and that he would bring a culture of prosperity.
He had contempt for the public sector and bureaucracy. He ridiculed the MNREGA, and the rights to food and education. The “development” that he offered was essentially for the consumerist society.
The very definition of the middle class was reduced to the hedonistic, ambitious and individualistic class of men and women in the age group of 18 to 40.
In this middle class, there was no place for art, theatre, literature, science research, and philosophical discourse. Neither Modi, nor his ‘middle-class’ supporters or the RSS, had interest in the refined and argumentative Indian.
There were no journalists, particularly “intellectual” columnists, writers and sociologists, artists and academicians, thinkers and historians on Modi and the RSS’ radar. Somehow, they were not seen as coming from the middle class.
Wind of change
By 2014, this new middle class, particularly the segment with at least one foot in the US or the Gulf, was impatient with what it thought was the dull, boring, non-aggressive, almost tired, regime of the Congress led by Dr Manmohan Singh.
Ironically, it was the same aspirant middle class with materialistic ambitions that had welcomed Dr Singh in 1991 with his policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. In fact, this class had felt immensely relieved when Sonia Gandhi recommended Dr Singh as Prime Minister.
Just a day before, there was a “bloodbath” in the stock market, led by BJP-minded brokers, amid fears that Sonia may be sworn in as PM. In Gujarat, Pravin Togadia had warned that if a Christian and a “foreigner” became the PM, there could be bloodbath on the streets as well. Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharati had threatened to go bald in protest.
The post-liberalisation middle class saw in this mayhem a kind of political uncertainty, if not anarchy. But when Sonia firmly refused to become PM, in spite of the clamour within the Congress, she rose in their eyes and their reservations about her foreign origin disappeared.
To some, she became a glorious character who renounced power and position. The UPA-I regime began on this overall positive note, with the middle class feeling proud that they had a world-class economist and Cambridge graduate as their PM. Even the NRI community shed its bias against the “dynasty”, and Dr Manmohan Singh emerged as their symbolic hero.
The shifts within
Interestingly, whatever hatred this class has for the Nehru-Gandhi family today, it had celebrated Rajiv Gandhi’s elevation as Prime Minister. Not only did the Congress have close to 50 per cent of the votes in 1984-85, they won 414 seats. The BJP had somehow managed to win just two in the Lok Sabha.
Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to the US and his grand welcome by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 was a moment of great pride for the NRI community.
But that middle class imagery collapsed with the arrival of the Ram Mandir issue and the Bofors scam. If Rajiv was ‘Mr Clean’, V.P. Singh stole his “saaf kameez” and became a ‘super clean PM’. But the middle class threw him out as well, when he announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations.
This middle class had always been anti-reservation and thought they had risen and succeeded abroad entirely on their merit. They were not grateful to the American system and their economy, which gave them the opportunity. Indeed, they were not obliged even to the Nehru legacy, which gave them the IIT degrees, or to Rajiv, who opened for them the gates of the Silicon Valley.
All of a sudden, they had begun to discover their identity as Hindus (later it became strident and hate-Muslim Hindutva). That neo-Hindutva, which demolished the Babri Masjid, created space for the BJP’s victory in 1998 and 1999. But the saffron politics lost its momentum, as party patriarch L.K. Advani lost his leadership, and Dr Singh emerged, only to vacate the space for Narendra Modi.
None too infallible
It is clear that the middle class has been shifting its political stance from Indira to the Janata Party, from Rajiv to V.P. Singh to Manmohan, and now to Modi.
And, just as this class threw out its earlier icons, it will also bring down the ‘messianic mythology’ of Modi. The middle class mindset, with its non-ideological volatility and impatience, has brought about most electoral changes.
Its tendency to get disillusioned rather quickly has created an unstable political atmosphere. This class often craves political stability, but does not understand that the epicentre of socio-economic instability is in their political behaviour.
The middle class was never a vote bank with a monolithic personality and uniform political outlook. From extremist Hindutva to secular ideas to radical Leftist views — all are led by the middle class. Almost all NGOs and trade union movements are run by educated (often highly educated) middle class activists. The bureaucracy and the media mainly come from this class.
However, over the years, this multi-dimensional middle class seemingly evolved into some uniform patterns of lifestyle. The ideological diversities (if any) remained, the political differences became sharp and strident, the notions of status (and even caste) and social hierarchy did interfere, but TVs and mobile phones brought about the levelling of mindsets.
The rise of the new middle class in semi-urban and even rural areas erased the thin lines between rural and urban.
It was this superficial “monoculture” of the middle class that was lured with Modi’s sales pitch. However, the dream has begun to fade away. The electoral plates beneath the political surface are shifting.
Kumar Ketkar is a former editor and Congress member of Rajya Sabha.
Biased article