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I still remember my student days in England when the pound sterling hovered around ₹16–18 and the dollar was below ₹10. Every purchase required mental arithmetic. A winter coat, a train ticket, even a modest meal was anxiously converted into rupees before money left our pockets. Foreign exchange was precious. Families stretched themselves to send money abroad. India was poorer then, and nobody pretended otherwise.
But there was honesty in that era. India did not constantly market itself as a rising superpower. Economic hardship was not wrapped in triumphant rhetoric. Citizens understood the country’s limitations.
Over the decades, the rupee weakened steadily. Economists may explain currency depreciation through inflation, oil dependence, trade deficits and capital flows. Ordinary citizens experience it differently. A weakening rupee quietly narrows aspiration itself. Foreign education becomes harder. Overseas travel grows expensive. Imported goods slip out of reach. Middle-class ambition slowly contracts.
When the dollar crossed ₹60 in 2013, television studios treated it as a national emergency. The UPA government was attacked relentlessly. Currency weakness became shorthand for policy failure and national decline.
It was in this atmosphere that Narendra Modi emerged as the promise of economic decisiveness and national resurgence. For millions of middle-class Indians, Modi represented far more than political change. He symbolised competence, discipline, ambition and strength. India, citizens were told, would no longer think like a hesitant postcolonial state. It would manufacture, innovate, attract investment and perhaps even rival China.
The middle class embraced that promise wholeheartedly. And because it believed in that dream, it tolerated disruption after disruption.
First came demonetisation in 2016 — perhaps independent India’s most disruptive peacetime economic decision. Citizens stood patiently in endless queues believing black money and corruption would finally be destroyed. Instead, nearly all invalidated currency returned to the banking system while informal businesses, traders and daily wage earners absorbed enormous damage. Yet much of the middle class defended the pain because it trusted the larger promise.
Then came GST. India undoubtedly needed tax reform. But the chaotic rollout burdened small and medium enterprises with compliance pressures they were poorly equipped to handle. Businesses spent years adapting to changing rules, technical glitches and mounting paperwork. Once again, the middle class remained patient.
Then came the Covid lockdown. India announced one of the world’s harshest shutdowns with only hours of notice. The economy contracted by nearly 24 per cent in a single quarter. Millions lost jobs. Small businesses collapsed. Household savings weakened dramatically. Even after statistical recovery, psychological recovery never fully arrived.
Today, India may officially be the world’s fifth-largest economy, but the lived experience of many middle-class families feels far less triumphant. Employment anxiety persists. Household costs continue rising. Healthcare and education have become punishingly expensive. Savings feel fragile. The rupee continues its long decline against major currencies.
Fuel prices have become especially symbolic. Petrol and diesel remain expensive despite periodic tax adjustments. LPG cylinders have become a recurring household anxiety. Energy inflation quietly enters everything — transport costs, vegetables, logistics, school fees and household budgets.
Against this backdrop came Narendra Modi’s recent Hyderabad speech urging citizens to conserve fuel, reduce unnecessary imports and embrace restraint in the national interest. Officially, this was not austerity. Politically, however, it sounded unmistakably like it to a middle class already coping with inflation, insecurity and shrinking purchasing power.
This is where the emotional compact between Modi and the middle class begins to fray.
The same middle class that once defended every disruption now asks quieter, more uncomfortable questions. What exactly did demonetisation achieve? Why do small businesses still struggle despite years of promised formalisation? If India is poised to overtake China, why does the national conversation increasingly revolve around economising and conservation? Why are citizens repeatedly asked for sacrifice while political spectacle grows ever larger?
Support for Modi remains substantial. Infrastructure expansion, highways, digital payments, welfare delivery and India’s enhanced diplomatic visibility are genuine achievements. The government has undeniably improved state capacity in several areas.
But political branding has increasingly outpaced economic comfort.
Middle classes are ultimately pragmatic. They may tolerate hardship temporarily in the name of nationalism, reform or stability. But eventually they judge governments through lived economics: secure employment, affordable energy, rising savings, stable purchasing power and confidence that their children will live better than they did.
Today, that confidence feels visibly weaker than it did a decade ago.
The symbolism matters. When citizens are asked to conserve petrol while watching massive political rallies, expensive publicity campaigns and grand inaugurations, the optics become difficult to ignore. The same government that promised to make India a global manufacturing powerhouse now appears to be preparing citizens for prolonged restraint.
Disenchantment rarely arrives dramatically. It begins quietly — in private conversations, fading enthusiasm and growing recognition that rhetoric alone cannot indefinitely substitute for economic reassurance.
The middle class that once saw Modi as deliverance from Congress-era policy paralysis now watches the rupee drift toward ₹100 against the dollar with growing unease. The same demographic that once celebrated achhe din now calculates whether foreign education for their children is still realistic or whether even a modest overseas holiday has become unaffordable.
This is not yet ideological rejection. It is something politically more dangerous: erosion of belief.
The middle class gave Modi a decade and extraordinary political capital. In return, it expected prosperity, not merely pride. India will continue growing. But growth statistics alone cannot sustain political faith indefinitely if families feel economically cornered in their daily lives.
The politics of aspiration is now colliding with the economics of reality. And for the first time in years, it is no longer obvious which will prevail.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.