A Class Phenomenon: Perspective on India’s Political Milieu

While exploring the historical processes of the ‘emergence, evolution and definition’ of the middle class in India, the volume refers to its expansion since the colonial days when it was ‘created as the interpreter between the colonial rulers and the millions whom they governed in the pre-Independence era’. Though postcolonial India witnessed the emergence of ‘new’ categories of middle class, it has continued to exist ‘in congruence with the state, occupying vital positions in state administration’. The ‘major sociological change’ in the composition of the middle class has happened since Independence as India underwent phases of political, social and economic transitions. It is one of these emergent categories of ‘new’ middle class, the ‘software professionals’, that the author focuses on in the volume. The author attributes the formation of this ‘new class’ to the ‘era of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation’ (p. xiv).