How Modi’s ‘New Middle Class’ Focus Made Caste Equations Redundant

The restive lower middle class has now taken fancy to religion-based identity, as opposed to caste-based identity.

• Search interest in Bhojpuri cinema has been consistently rising since 2014 and it raced ahead of even Bollywood in 2018, as per a Mint report.
• Haryana’s dance sensation Sapna Chaudhary is reported to have featured in Google’s top searches for two consecutive years, beginning 2017.
• According to Business Today, “in the past two years, viewership of Bhojpuri channels has gone up by a whopping 134 percent, while Assamese and Odiya channels have witnessed a viewership increase of 125 percent and 89 percent respectively.”
• The expansion of viewership of content in regional languages is much higher than Hindi or English.

These are just some of the many snippets of new India, that follow no convention, is experimental, is perhaps not well versed with English and therefore contemptuous to the associated markers (liberalism and whatever it stands for, perhaps), consumes a lot of internet data, and is searching for a new identity.

Is this the new India that is enamoured with Narendra Modi? Is this the reason why the PM never misses an opportunity to berate ‘Lutyens’ intellectuals’ and ‘Khan Market liberals’?

Let us rewind to 2012. Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, seeking re-election, had promised to change the lives of, what he called, neo-Middle Class people.

His party’s election manifesto then had talked about identifying the potential beneficiaries belonging to this group, so that targeted welfare schemes could be launched.

Rapid Expansion of Lower Middle Class Since 2004

Analysing NSSO data, social scientists Sandhya Krishnan and Neeraj Hatekar observe that “from 2004-05 to 2011-12, we witnessed an astonishing change in the class composition in India… The new middle class, which accounted for less than 30 percent of the population earlier, rose to over 50 percent. In absolute size, the new middle class almost doubled, from 304 million in 2004-05 to 604 million in 2011-12.”

“The middle-middle and upper-middle classes also expanded, from a mere five percent of the population in 2004-05 to 13 percent in 2011-12. But interestingly, the bulk of the expansion in the new middle class in this period was led by the lower middle class, which constituted three-fourths of the total new middle class population. Also, unlike the earlier period, both rural and urban areas witnessed an increase in the share of the new middle class and reduction of the poor,” they added.

What this research indicates is that the lower middle class constitutes nearly 37 percent of the country’s population, a jump of 15 percentage points in eight years beginning 2004-05.

This is the section Modi referred to as the neo-Middle class, barely surviving and most susceptible to rising prices.

A stable price regime in the last five years, as opposed to elevated levels of inflation during the UPA years, would have come as a welcome relief for them.

It is reasonable to assume that Modi regime’s targeted schemes like the Mudra Yojana (PMMY) with an average loan size of nearly Rs 20,000, Ujjwala, overdraft facilities with Jan Dhan accounts, health insurance scheme, the promised insurance scheme for unorganised sector workers and the promise of raising the income tax exemption limit to Rs 5 lakh would have helped the lower middle class the most.

BJP No Longer Just a Brahmin-Bania Party

Is that the reason why there is growing convergence in voting behaviour of lower middle class despite divergent caste affiliations?

An analysis of the 2019 verdict shows precisely that. Here are some of the pointers:

• According to CSDS data, as many as 75 percent of all privileged castes, 66 percent of other backward classes, 38 percent Dalits and 54 percent scheduled tribes are estimated to have voted for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. If caste was a consideration, would such disparate social groups have voted for the saffron party?
• Despite the presence of caste-based parties like RJD and HAM, nearly 70 percent of non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits are estimated to have voted for the BJP in Bihar. Even one out of every five Yadav voters is believed to have voted for the BJP-led alliance in the state. If this is not redundancy of caste when it comes to influencing one’s voting behaviour, what is? CSDS data shows that the erosion of support for RJD-led alliance among Yadavs has been quite significant.
• Despite the presence of known Dalit and OBC parties like the BSP and the SP, nearly 70 percent of non-Yadav OBCs and 48 percent of non-Jatav Dalits are estimated to have voted for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Is it possible without caste losing its salience in the political arena?
• CSDS data reveals that the BJP is estimated to have got votes from all sections – Jats, privileged castes, OBCs and STs included – in excess of 60 percent other than Dalits.
• CSDS data also suggests that the BJP has gained the most in semi-urban centres and rural areas. The data clearly highlights the BJP’s growing hold over the lower middle class.
• In constituencies with a sizeable Dalit population, the BJP’s vote share is estimated to have gone up by a whopping 11 percentage points since 2014, according to CSDS.

Modi’s focus on new middle class, with targeted sops, seems to have rendered the traditional caste-politics association irrelevant, marking an end of the politics of social justice variety. All these data points suggest as much.

The restive lower middle class has now taken fancy to the religion-based identity, Hindutva to be precise, as opposed to the caste-based identity.

Since this marks the beginning of a new phase in Indian politics, the broad contours of things to come look hazy.

Will this transition prove to be a smooth one? A large section would say: ‘Modi hai to mumkin hai.’