Suneel Vatsyayan's Blog

“I deserve to be different from others . I belong to the new consuming class because I worked for it. I earned it . This is a better way to prove my social mobility by having a right (still limited right as per income ) to consume,” says Anil, 30 year old from Delhi NCR Gurgoan who working in a Multi National Company. The new class, consuming class, is found among the traditional middle class in India, especially in metropolitan cities. This is really a market driven new identity which is built on a happy or unhappy past. People would like to keep this consuming class identity as a sign of success.

In a recent Hindustan Times news paper article with the headline “The many classes in the middle” the writer Rama Bijapurkar talks about a new class among the middle class, whose essential qualification is discontented consumerism or so to say aspiring consumerism – ready to consume above a threshold. The author says it is not a desperate group of people among the Indian middle class but it is a homogenous one culturally.

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