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Stretched to limits, the Middle Class has nowhere to go

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Kamlesh Singh
Kamlesh SinghApr 14, 2020 | 18:16

Stretched to limits, the Middle Class has nowhere to go

This may be the time for the government to ensure the middle class doesn't collapse.

The one with a burgeoning middle-class has been how the world talks about India. The world saw it as an ever-growing market and we believed it was good to grow in the middle. It meant more and more people from the bottom were climbing up the ladder to settle somewhere in the middle. 

Today, a pandemic threatens the middle, a disease that hits above the belt, unlike cholera and malaria that struck the unwashed and unsheltered. Covid-19 doesn't distinguish between classes but the aftermath will certainly distinguish itself by hurting this mass in the middle. 

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The middle-class may shrink as the world battles the biggest health scare in a century. The tax-paying, quick-footed, clever and sometimes crooked salaried middle-class keeps the giant machine of the economy moving while the rich pump in money and the poor the muscle. The middle never identified with the poor because it wore its education on its sleeve. It aspired to be identified with the rich but it couldn't afford the perfume.

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The middle-class is the stomach of the society, consumer of all human industry and host to bacteria, good and bad. (Representative photo: Reuters)

Amid news of pay cuts and job losses, they see a possible slide out of the bracket, down with the trodden. It takes just a year's adversity to undo years of a good run. It has the status of the typical middle-class family's middle son. The elder has all the respect, the younger all the affection. The middle one is left in the middle, a little bit of this and a little of that. But nothing ever complete enough, to nurse a grudge for a lifetime.

The middle-class is the stomach of the society, consumer of all human industry and host to bacteria, good and bad. Complaining at times but calms quickly with OTC pills, bitter or not. It's true that it nourishes the entire body politic but it excretes a lot of excreta in the process. Remember that's hated universally and the body politic wants to keep a distance from it, flush it away from its sight. 

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The middle has two major issues. Constipation that keeps its dreams in check, inducing a perpetual lack of confidence to fly high. The isabgols of higher education and the sub-goals of emigration keep the goal of prosperity in its sight, hence there are no upheavals. The other is loose emotions. While wearing practicality on its sleeves, the middle-class is prone to getting carried away by five-yearly winds of promises. Even if unfulfilled, it tries to go with the flow. It doesn't care about the malnourished feet that can't take the load of the entire body; it can't feel how it's crushed by the heavy-handed top that sits above it. It squats in submission and carries on.

It cannot imagine being the feet that tread the uneven land and hates it viscerally. It imagines to be the head and heart and hence its hate is overcome by the respect it wants when it ever attains the same. This is the middle-class conundrum that is about to be compounded by a crisis that goes for the throat in an attempt to block the airways.

The lower masses have no jobs in a lockdown. The upper classes have no existential worries. It's the middle that has begun losing jobs and gaining worries. They get no salary, the government doesn't get their taxes, even when the factories begin producing, the middle class doesn't have monies to consume. That's how the dominoes fall. The middle class can't go menial and they got no manual to find a troubleshooting guide. 

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They get cheated budget after the national budget. This may be the time for the government to ensure this middle doesn't collapse. Because the burgeoning middle-class phrase has been India's USP. You lose your USP, you have no standing in the global market. 

Last updated: April 16, 2020 | 19:14
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