Urban middle class in India and its crisis and its dimensions

Indiäs middle class was the creation of the British rule and the introduction of English education in the country. The Indian urban middle class has been an extraordinary and interesting area of social research and analysis. The phenomenon of urban middle class has been highly heterogeneous in the sense that it has invited highly diversified views in its explanation. The biggest challenge has been to define the middle class. The changes in the family structure, redefined neighbourhood, and also in the notions of recreation, growing caste and religious intolerance have all created a strange combination of situations. The middle class places these households between the poor and the extremely rich. This potentially encompasses a very large and varied group of individuals, but the Indian middle class has been typically perceived to be an educated section of urban society employed in or seeking white collar jobs. Such approach involves the use of several implicit assumptions about who are the different classes and what their income levels must be to which the results are extremely sensitive.